Space Station Gets Its First Woman Commander

— -- Peggy Whitson makes it look so easy. The Iowa farmer's daughter is now the first woman to command the International Space Station, and she says it's really no big deal.

Her colleague, Pam Melroy, who will command the shuttle flight scheduled to head to the space station Tuesday, said Whitson is the perfect person for the job.

"I love Peggy's leadership style," said Melroy. "I think the most important element of her style is her sense of humor, which is really just a sense of perspective. And that is really important because as a leader, one of the most important things you have to keep is the big picture. She is very direct and very kind at the same time."

Peggy Whitson was selected as an astronaut in 1996 and spent 184 days on the space station in 2002, good preparation for her new post. She will oversee the most ambitious phase of construction on the International Space Station.

"It is a technological achievement," she told ABC News before leaving for orbit in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft earlier this month. "The fact that we are putting together these pieces of hardware from all different countries is really and truly almost miraculous."

The 16 countries building the International Space Station have struggled to keep it operational, grappling with computer failures, gyroscope failures and supply issues. But that, said Whitson, is what makes the space station so valuable: learning how to keep such a base operational on orbit.

"We are using this assembly task, this very complicated assembly task in space and difficult environments," she said. "So we can use what we learn to build bases on the moon and on Mars, this is a key stepping stone to getting there."

The view, weightlessness, spacewalks: Six months in space on orbit can be rewarding.

Astronaut Clay Anderson will be returning to Earth on the next shuttle mission; he spoke wistfully about missing his family, and a good steak dinner with a loaded baked potato. He may want a beer, too, but it is politically incorrect for an astronaut to even breathe a word about alcohol these days.