With NASA Artemis 2 rocket and spaceship returning to the launch pad With the upcoming launch of a lunar mission, and with March being Women’s History Month, now is the ideal time to go see”Cosmonaut“.
This new feature-length documentary showcases the pioneering astronaut’s inspiring achievements. Colonel Eileen M. Collinswho rose to become the first female space shuttle pilot and commander. Directed by British filmmaker Hannah Berryman and based on Collins’ 2021 memoir, “Through the glass ceiling to the stars” (Arcade), “Spacewoman” follows the remarkable journey of a true American hero from humble beginnings in a small town.
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collins retired from the Air Force in 2005 and from the NASA astronaut corps in 2006, having accumulated more than 6,751 hours piloting thirty different types of aircraft and logging 872 hours in space.
“I had read Eileen’s book and really loved the story,” Berryman tells Space. “There were certain things that stood out to me other than, obviously, her being the first female shuttle pilot and commander, which was incredible.”
While his accomplishments speak for themselves, it was Collin’s fight to get there that really inspired Berryman to make this film.
“If it had seemed like an easy path from a certain kind of background, straight to doing it all, it would have seemed less interesting to me as a story,” Berryman explains. “But since Eileen didn’t have the easiest experience, I thought it was interesting. Also, when she was commanding the first mission right after the Columbia disaster, I felt like there was a way to create a really human, dramatic emotional narrative from the book.”
Collins is a naturally shy person despite her bold achievements in human spaceflight, which laid the groundwork for more women to enter NASA’s astronaut program and follow in her footsteps.
“I don’t like to promote myself and Hannah knows it,” Collins admits. “I always wanted to be a pilot, an astronaut, do great work, explore. I like going places, reading books and doing new things.”
“When I retired in 2007, I decided to just work on boards and advisory groups and wanted to raise my children. I had no intention of writing a book. Now, this documentary would not have existed without it.” explains Collins. “But then the pandemic hit in 2020 and I had nothing to do but sit and have Skype meetings. Over the years, my co-author Jonathan Ward reached out to me and I finally called him in April 2020 and said, ‘Okay, let’s write the book.’
Even after having published her book, Collins was reluctant to take another step into the spotlight when approached.
“The month after it was published I was contacted by producer Keith Haviland, who is from London. He made ‘The Last Man on the Moon’ about Gene Cernan and several others about space and aviation,” Collins recalls. “And I said, ‘No, I didn’t want my life to be on the big screen.’ A couple of months went by and I changed my mind, knowing that this was going to be something big. There would be a lot of work and I had to decide what part of my personal life I want to bring to light.”
First with director Hannah Berryman in her hometown of Elmira, New York, on the porch of her father’s old house. Once he committed to the project, he went in.
“I don’t make a decision and do something half-heartedly. I think we had a great team,” Collins remembers. “We all get along well and work together fabulously.”
One of his first milestones seen in the documentary occurred aboard Discovery in 1995 on the STS-63 mission, when he assumed piloting duties under the command of Commander Jim Weatherbee to make history. It could have been an anxiety-inducing moment, but Collins was completely calm under pressure.
“I’m a test pilot, so that’s what I do. In fact, NASA interviewed me in 1989 as a mission specialist,” he notes. “NASA told me, ‘We’ll hire you as a pilot because that’s what you are.’ I’ve been flying since I was 20. To me, I was just doing my job.”
The New York native was also the pilot of Atlantis on STS-84 in 1997 when its crew docked with the Russian MIR Space Station. In 1999, Collins became the first female U.S. spacecraft commander with the Columbia mission STS-93 that deployed the Chandra X-ray Observatory. His last flight was STS-114 in 2005 as commander of Discovery, the critical “Return to Flight” mission following the catastrophic loss of Columbia in 2003.
“It’s about focusing on what you’re doing and not thinking about who’s watching me,” Collins explains. “Both my shuttle landings were at night. I will say that it is much more difficult to land at night. I prefer to do a daytime landing. You have to have very good depth perception and be very well trained.”
Summarizing all the distinguished dates in Collins’ time at NASA required Berryman to focus on composing the material to present for maximum emotional resonance with the audience.
“One of the challenges of any kind of story like this is that you have to be a little bit on the edge of their seats, even though they can see Eileen in front of them and know that she’s okay,” Berryman adds. “You want to be on those missions in the moment, feeling like you’re still in danger like in any movie. And also the balancing act between the family history and the mission stories. If you make a movie about someone who’s done great things and you just did that, that’s not interesting. We want to know about real people.”
Berryman reminds us that we are all a mixture of things and that we will never be good at everything at all times, and that in the end makes everything even more impressive.
“It was really important to maintain that human fallibility that we’re all just a family going through this. Then when you feel the resolve, you really care. I was happy when we had film screenings in the UK in the fall because people seemed to be so moved and thought Eileen was amazing. You’re more amazing as a real person than if you were a cipher of wonder. If you’ve had challenges in life like the rest of us, that makes it even more moving and impressive.”
Summarizing one’s life and career in less than two hours may seem like a daunting task for the creative team, and for Collins too, as she walked down memory lane during production. “Spacewoman” employs a variety of intimate scenes culled from archival footage of missions, television shows and news appearances, and an old VHS camcorder.
“My husband Pat and I gave Hannah and her team all of our VHS tapes that we had converted to DVDs and we had all the NASA stuff,” Collins says. “On the family side, probably one of the happiest times of my life was raising my children. It was fun to watch the videos again. I saw the movie again on Friday night. We screened it at March Air Force Base in Riverside, California. They wanted me to be in person and we got a standing ovation.
“My daughter, Bridget, has a very important role in the movie and people came up to me afterwards and said, ‘Your daughter is amazing and she really made the movie.’ It’s funny, for some reason we never put those videos out and showed them. I like to tell people that I had the two best jobs in the world. I was a father and I was an astronaut. There’s a joke I used to tell: the best training to be a shuttle commander is to be a father. Because you have to know how to say no.”
“Spacewoman” will be released in theaters on March 20, 2026.
