What's In...An astronaut's flight bag

Astronaut Kathryn Sullivan was the first American woman to walk in space and is a veteran of three space shuttles. She counts among her buddies, Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, and space legends like John Glenn and Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon.

She'll be in Michigan at the end of the month as the featured speaker of the annual Sally Ride Science Festival for Girls, which has science and math workshops for girls in grades 5-8. Kathy, 54, will talk about her life and experience in space, and the girls get to ask questions.

She is the science adviser at the Center of Science and Industry (COSI) in Columbus, Ohio, one of the nation's first hands-on science centers.

This is what's in her flight bag -- she's driving, actually -- to Michigan.

Laptop computer: She's working on a book about leadership.

Computer jump drive: It has "a gazillion pictures that will help me tell the story" of space flight and "how cool it is to look out of the windows" of a spaceship and see where she grew up, Woodland Hills, Calif.

NASA flight bomber jacket: Kathy's jacket is a flight map of her accomplishments. It's got an American flag and wings representing her as a Navy astronaut specialist. One patch represents the astronaut class of 1978. Three patches symbolize each of the shuttle missions she flew on -- on Challenger in 1984 when she walked in space and Sally Ride was her crewmate; in 1990 when she traveled on Discovery and deployed the Hubble Space Telescope; and her final mission on Atlantis in 1992. The fifth patch has the number 25, with a space shuttle swooping across it -- meaning she's flown at 25 times the speed of sound.

Gym togs: To relax.

Crossword or Sudoku puzzle book: It's an everyday fixation.

Felt pens: The better to sign autographs.