One thing Ailsa Carroll is now sure of: she has what it takes to become an astronaut.
She has experienced 4 g's of lift-off force and weightlessness in the International Space Camp's space simulator in Huntsville, Alabama - all without needing a sick bag.
Not only does the Columba College 17-year-old have the constitution to become an astronaut, it appears she also has the ability to cope with the mental and emotional demands astronauts must face.
She successfully completed simulations of missions aboard the International Space Station, Space Shuttle Atlantis and at mission control, as well as a space walk in a space suit.
While much of the experience was carried out in full Earth gravity, she said staff at the camp reminded her and her teammates of what life in zero gravity would be like.
''If you left your pen on the table, someone would come along and pick it up and make it look like it was floating through the air like it would in zero gravity.
''Then they would pretend to poke one of my team members in the eye with it, and tell them they were blind for the rest of the mission.''
Ailsa said they were very real scenarios which she had not considered about space flight before attending the camp.
Her only fear at camp was that it would be the closest she would come to going into space.
''I hope it's not the closest I come to becoming an astronaut.''
To that end, she now plans to study megatronics (the study of all fields of engineering) or aeronautical engineering, hopefully at a university in the United States.
She said space was the edge of what humans were capable of, and she wanted to be a part of the front edge of technological development.
''I hope my study will take me the next step toward a career at Nasa, or the European Space Agency - I could learn to speak Russian.''
Ailsa was selected ahead of thousands of other pupils around the world because of her excellent academic results and her involvement in aeronautics (flying aircraft on computer flight simulators), robotics and computer programming.
She was joined by more than 150 like-minded pupils from 23 different countries, including Burnside High School pupil Thomas Marsh, of Christchurch.
