NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson didn’t tell Albert Lea High School students to aim for the stars, but she told students to set their goals high, because they can attain more than they think.

“My message to you people — not that you all should become astronauts, although I would encourage any of you who are interested — but that you should set your goals really high because you can attain more than you think,” she said.

Whitson spoke at a student assembly in the high school auditorium around 1 p.m. Wednesday .

To illustrate that point, Whitson spoke of the things she’s accomplished so far during her career as an astronaut. Whitson spent six months on the International Space Station as commander of Expedition 16; she was the first woman to serve as commander.

Whitson has spent the most time in space for any U.S. astronaut: 377 days, which is 20th among all space veterans. She’s spent the more time on spacewalks than any other female astronaut with 39 hours, 46 minutes.

Attaining her dream of becoming an astronaut did not come easy. It took nearly a decade of applications before finally she was finally accepted into the astronaut program.

“I didn’t know how hard it would be. It took a lot of years to do it,” Whitson said.

Whitson has ties to the Midwest and grew up on a farm in south central Iowa, and the closest town to her home had a population of about 30 people. She said she knew she wanted to be an astronaut from the time she saw the Apollo 11 land on the moon when she was 9.

Around the time she graduated from high school, the first women were accepted into the astronaut program. Whitson went on to earn her Ph.D. in biochemistry from Rice University, and began working for NASA.

Though she also spent more than six months in space on Expedition 5, she spoke to the students mostly about her experience as commander on Expedition 16.

The Expedition 16 crew lifted off in the Soyuz TMA-11 spacecraft in Kazakhstan from the same site Yuri Gagarin launched from on the first space flight. The crew of Whitson and Cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko launched Oct. 10, 2007.

After a 214-foot solar ray tore during deployment, Whitson and the crew needed to make new conductive wires to mend the ray so the modules on the ISS could have full power.

“I think it’s pretty cool that those wires that I made are still holding that solar ray together today,” Whitson said.

Whitson displayed a videos and photographs from her time in space, including pictures of her workouts in space. The exercises were vital to maintain muscle mass and bone density, and she said resistive exercises that mimics weight lifting were her favorite exercise during her trip.

One video showed Whitson, Malenchenko and visiting crew making a conga line and floating through the zero gravity to display the changes they’d made to the space station. Whitson said the Expedition-16 crew and visiting crews increased the volume of the ISS by 48 percent, adding the Harmony connecting node, the European Space Agency’s Columbus laboratory, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Kibo logistics pressurized module and the Canadian Space Agency’s Dextre robot.

Whitson also answered questions for about 15 minutes, and said the space walks were the best part of being in space. The worst part was the food, which she said was served in an eight-day cycle, so she said the meals became very predictable.

Whitson and Malenchenko returned to earth April 19, 2008, but they landed 350 miles off course and their landing started a grass fire. They reentered at an incorrect orientation that caused the environment in the capsule to go to eight times the force of gravity, which she said was a difficult change from zero gravity.

After their landing, Kazakhstan residents found the crew after responding to the grass fire, but it took some time to convince them they had come from space, since there were few televisions and advancements in the area.

Whitson has two patents on blood separation technologies to separate plasma from the blood cells and preserve it in dried form.

Whitson also spoke at Wedgewood Cove Golf Club at 8:15 p.m. Wednesday.