28 years on and my feet are firmly on the ground, working as a journalist and presenter at BBC 5 live. But I got a huge thrill - and those same goosebumps I felt as a child - returning to NASA's Kennedy Space Centre.
This time it was to walk a launch pad and see one of the newest spacecrafts actually being built. To clamber into a training model of the International Space Station, and to marvel at the views of the real thing projected onto huge screens at Mission Control in Texas. Space still has me hooked.
The best bit? Meeting the women who, unlike me, made those childhood dreams of working in the space industry a reality. Every year in the UK, 50,000 fewer women than men graduate with the qualifications to equip them for a career in Science, Technology, Engineering or Maths.
Even by the age of 16 girls are overwhelmingly moving away from studying those so-called STEM subjects. They need role models like these - bright, smart, brilliant women who've chased their dreams all the way into orbit.
Women like Karen Nyberg, NASA's 50th astronaut, who told me how she'd dreamed of going to the moon. No-one's set foot on it since 1972, and now the focus has moved beyond it and on to delivering humans to Mars.
Women like Gioia Massa, the plant-mad biologist who's working out how to produce fresh food in zero gravity under the coloured growth lights she calls her 'disco', and all the while making sure it tastes good.
Women like Emily Nelson, a Flight Director, who sits in the boss's chair at Mission Control and makes one of the most complicated space projects ever created - the ISS - run smoothly.
And women like Allison McIntyre, whose incredible office looks out on a huge hangar full of spacecraft mockups, where astronauts from all over the world train for their trip to space. She's hoping that one day, when the first humans reach Mars, it'll be a woman who takes that first small step into the red planet to mark a giant leap for mankind.
The women of NASA inspired me. I bet they inspire you too..
Debrief Meet The Brilliant Women Of Nasa
1 of 5Karen Nyberg
Karen Nyberg has been to space twice, including a spell on the International Space Station in 2013."Right before my space shuttle flight, my older sister admitted that she had thought it was very 'cute' that I'd said I wanted to be an astronaut when I was little!"When I was selected as an astronaut in 2000, I thought that might be a realistic possibility that we would be the next to go to the Moon, so it's unfortunate we weren't. A woman walking on the moon? It will happen."Find what your passion is - when I was growing up, my passion was space. Then find out what you need to do, to reach the goal you have."A lot of times you'll find that math and science and those type of fields will get you there. And they're challenging, I'm not going to lie to you, but so rewarding when you reach that goal."We need to figure out as mentors and educators how to keep girls in these fields so they can reach for the stars."
2 of 5Gioia Massa
Gioia Massa is project manager in the Veggie lab at Kennedy Space Center, working on future food production for when humans go deeper into space."There were very few female role models when I was starting out."I would often find myself the only woman in the room, but it never really bothered me. It helps that I'm oblivious to a lot of it, perhaps there were things that were discriminatory but I wasn't aware of them because I was off in my own little scientific world!"The number one thing for me was to be stubborn and follow your heart, and don't let anyone tell you that you can't do that."There certainly were aspects where I was challenged, I wasn't as great in math as some of my colleagues, my handwriting is terrible, so there are things that are not my strength, but when I fell in love with plants, plants were my strength and I really learnt and focused on that."
3 of 5Joy Bryant
Senior Boeing engineer Joy Bryant was the first woman ever to be hired for the Kennedy Space Center launch sites."Word spread around the launch pad that they had hired a female. The biggest debate was not my qualifications, it was - what they were going to do because there was only one bathroom in the blockhouse!"In meetings, there was always a presumption that I was the secretary. It's gotten better, but there was always an assumption about my role and my position. When I'm asked to bring the coffee, I bring the coffee... then I start the meeting."I would like to see the next footprint to be a lady. I want for us to have any opportunities to succeed. I don't want to celebrate that it was a woman, I want to celebrate that a woman chose to do that and succeeded."
4 of 5Lexi Deal
Lexi Deal is a payloads systems engineer for Boeing at Johnson Space Center, looking after the exterior of the space station."I come from a different perspective, my mother was a vascular surgeon, I found a picture of her and she was one of only one or two women in her graduating class."I grew up thinking I could do anything I wanted. She made sure as a child that I could see other women, she went and searched book stores for women in pilot seats for me.""I went to a University that was one-third women - I got a lot of well-meaning but sexist questions, like 'are you going to be OK there?'"Know yourself, figure out what you're interested in, focus on that and forget everybody else."
5 of 5Misty Snopkowski
Misty Snopkowski is an engineer with Nasa's Commercial Crew Program, working with Space X at Kennedy Space Center."Even in school I knew I wanted to be an engineer. I like Star Trek: The Next Generation, I was a total nerd in high school!"If you ask a little girl what they want to be when they grow up, you're never going to hear 'engineer' because they can't visualise what that means or what kind of job that is. I was lucky because my dad was an engineer, so I understood it."My first job was at a maintenance facility in Miami. When I was offered the job, my manager told me 'there's a shop here with about 200 guys and you're going to be the first female working here as an engineer. You need to be prepared for that'. I didn't really understand what that meant."The job itself was really gruelling but I did find that I had to work a lot harder than my colleagues did, just to make sure I always had the answer."I think now it's the cool thing to be totally into math and science and being able to code. If you don't know how to code you're not in the cool club, so it's totally different now."I've never even had a desire to be an astronaut - I get motion sickness really bad - so I'll be the person to help you get up there, but I don't know if I'd ever go up there myself.""I would love to see Nasa hire a female administrator, the head honcho in Washington. That's a huge job, but that would be a great thing for Nasa. And I do love DC!"
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.