MONTREAL - When Canadian astronaut Julie Payette arrives at the International Space Station on Monday, it will be a lot bigger, busier and more crowded than her last visit 10 years ago.

Since that trip, when Payette became the first Canadian to visit the station, the space laboratory has grown to the size of two football fields. The mother of two boys is scheduled to blast off Saturday morning from Florida aboard the U.S. Space Shuttle Endeavour with six crew mates.

Payette, 45, will be a shuttle flight engineer for the first time and will have "the best seat in the house" as part of the cockpit crew.

"It's very rare for a non-U.S. person to have that position," she said in a recent interview with The Canadian Press.

But it may be the last time a Canadian flies on an American shuttle because the orbiters are tentatively due to be retired in October 2010.

After a two-day voyage to the station, Payette and her space colleagues will link up with fellow Canadian astronaut Bob Thirsk and five other crew members.

Thirsk arrived May 29 on board a Russian Soyuz spacecraft along with a Russian and a Belgian, bringing the station up to a full-time crew of six.

When Payette steps inside, it will be the first time Canada has had two of its astronauts on board at the same time.

There will also be a record 13 people on the station - with Payette the only woman.

"They will be representing every single partner nation in the International Space Station program," she said.

"We'll have a European, we'll have a Japanese, we"ll have Russians, we'll have Americans and two Canadians."

Payette says she feels "very privileged."

"I'm one of the few astronauts who will have seen (the station) at the very beginning and almost at the very end of its assembly and construction."

There was no one inside when she first visited in 1999 after flying up on the U.S. Space Shuttle Discovery as part of the second visiting crew.

"At the time, we were really bringing up the first pieces of equipment and we were setting the stage for the first permanent long-duration crew," Payette recalled.

During her 16-day mission, she will be kept busy "15 out of the 16" helping to operate three robotic space arms.

One of them is the Canadarm1 on the shuttle, the other is the Canadarm2 on the space station and the third is a Japanese arm.

"There's more than one operator for this mission because we are way too busy and sometimes we're manipulating two arms at the same time," she added.

The Japanese robotic arm will be used to install a platform containing science experiments on the tip of the station's Japanese Kibo module.

"And we are conducting five space walks to do all this heavy-duty work, so it is very busy," she stressed. Solar panel batteries will also be replaced.

Payette won't need to pack a heavy-duty space suit, though, because she won't be going outside the station to help replace the batteries.

Her luggage will be stuffed with a lot of Canadiana, including about two dozen CDs with a sampling of music from across the country.

"We're bringing a CD from at least one artist per province and from the Territories," she noted.

One of the albums is by Kal Hourd, a 34-year-old singer from Saskatchewan. Album producers had to rush to make a copy available because it isn't scheduled to be officially released until August.

Payette will be listening to pop, classical and folk music as well as the soundtracks from two Cirque du soleil productions.

She will also be wearing a Montreal Canadiens No. 9 jersey signed by the late Maurice Richard as she rock and rolls around in the giant space complex.

Her "Official Flying Kit" includes drops of water from the Great Lakes and the three oceans bordering Canada; a flag from the United World College, an international school she attended in Wales; and a rough diamond from a mine in Yellowknife.

Payette is also bringing along a Canadian Olympic Committee jersey signed by athletes who will represent Canada at the Winter Games in Vancouver next year.

One item she is carrying with her has already been in space - a stainless steel teaspoon that was part of the cutlery Payette had with her on the station in 1999.

It accidentally got left behind and floated around the space station until it was recovered by a fellow astronaut during a later visit.

"It's kind of silly, it's the one object that is personal," she said. "Everything else is for other people.

"I'm hoping to donate it for an exhibit because it comes with a story and it makes the whole thing human."