LONGUEUIL, Que. - Fresh from her second sojourn in space, Canadian astronaut Julie Payette marvelled at the sheer size and friendly confines of the International Space Station and just how much it's changed since she last dropped by a decade earlier.
"The space station was really small (then) -- only two modules, nobody on board and the very beginning of construction," said Payette, who was the first Canadian to visit the station in 1999.
"Ten years later, we have an incredible outpost: the size of two football fields, six people living on board, the capacity to do first-class research in microgravity."
In her first interviews since returning to Earth from a 16-day mission aboard the now-enlarged station, Payette said Friday things had changed from her previous visit a decade earlier aboard the shuttle Discovery.
Last time she went, she arrived to a barren vessel and, she now jokes, that she had to flip on the light switch when she arrived.
This time, she arrived to the flash of cameras as a half-dozen colleagues snapped photos when she joined them aboard. There was even another Canadian there. She received a bear hug from fellow Canuck Bob Thirsk when she arrived for her July visit.
Canada's only female astronaut was greeted with thunderous applause Friday from space agency staff as she arrived in the country for the first time since returning to Earth almost a month ago.
Presenting her trip to space as someone would show off a slide show from a recent beach vacation, Payette displayed a handful of the 8,000 photographs taken by the crew of Endeavour during their stay of just over two weeks.
During her talk at the Canadian Space Agency headquarters south of Montreal, Payette recounted that she was often armed with a camera as it was her job to document the mission.
One of the photos showed a clearly tanned Payette floating next to a chalky Thirsk, the other Canadian who had been aboard the station for a few months and whose six-month mission is due to end in November.
Payette had spent days running on the beach in Florida after six scrubbed shuttle launches, because weather and repair work delayed her trip by a number of weeks. The number of delays nearly set a NASA record.
"We definitely weren't interested in breaking any records," Payette said.
The moment she blasted off, Payette's mission was instantly a historic one for Canada as it marked the first time two Canadian astronauts were in space at once.
As the crew's robotic-arm expert, Payette operated three arms during the mission: the station's Canadarm2, the shuttle's Canadarm, and the Japanese arm.
Payette said she was especially proud of all that the Endeavour crew accomplished during her stay -- a workload unlikely to be repeated, with NASA shutting down its shuttle program next year.
Five spacewalks were performed during the mission. The 13-person crew also completed the installation of a platform outside the Japanese laboratory Kibo, and replaced critical equipment.
Payette said she'd hoped to bring back some of the goodies that were part of a uniquely Canadian celestial feast.
But aside from a few crumbs, there was very little left of the fruit bars from Ontario, salmon jerky from the north, maple cookies, Smarties candies, beef jerky from Alberta and salmon pate from British Columbia.
"I asked the team not to eat everything, and we're talking about 12 guys," joked Payette, who was one of a record 13 people on the station during her visit.
"It wasn't going well, so I tried to hide some of the food so I could bring it back to show people."
She lamented at what she managed to salvage: an empty maple butter container, a mostly consumed bottle of maple syrup and some salmon jerky.
Payette says after a few days of rest and relaxation, it's back to Houston where Canada's two newest astronauts arrived a few weeks back to begin two years of basic training.
She expects she and the other veteran Canadian space travellers will play the role of handler, trainer and mentor for David Saint-Jacques and Jeremy Hansen in the coming years.
And while she will be the last Canadian to fly aboard a U.S. shuttle, she hopes to get back to the station again soon.
"We have an international space station and they will need people to man it," she said.
