Astronauts, Female

An astronaut is a person trained for spaceflight and may serve in a variety of technical positions as a pilot or crewmember. Most astronauts are trained in scientific or technical fields, through either military or civilian programs. Although several nations have space research organizations and agreements, only three countries have launched manned spaceflights: China, Russia (former Soviet Union), and the United States. Of these countries, only Russia and the United States have sent female astronauts into space, although both men and women from other nations (such as England, France, Canada, Germany, Japan, Korea, Iran, and others) have flown on Russian and U.S. space flights. The Chinese space program is the newest (sending its first astronaut only in 2009), and it is expected to train its first female astronauts sometime in the next decade.

International space programs began in the mid-20th century when both the United States and Russia established government-run space agencies. Partially in response to Russia launching the Sputnik satellite in 1957, the United States moved forward with the establishment of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958. Russia won this part of the Cold War “space race” by sending the first person, Yuri Gagarin, into space in 1961. Two years later, in 1963, Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman in space. The space race continued through the 1960s, and in 1969, the United States scored a victory when astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon. The Russian Mir space station was launched in 1986 and, in the post-Cold War era, many missions have focused on construction and operations at the International Space Station (ISS).

The Russian female cosmonauts were therefore in space 20 years before the first (and most famous) U.S. female astronaut, Sally Ride, flew in 1983. Russia has since sent two more women into space: Svetlana Savitskaya in 1982 (also the first woman to walk in space in 1984) and Yelena Kondakova in 1994. Most of the first generation of U.S. male astronauts were trained as military jet pilots, an occupation from which U.S. women were generally excluded. In the 1960s, some women who had served as Women's Air Force Service Pilots (WASPs) during World War II petitioned for admittance into the astronaut program, but were denied by the U.S. Congress. It was not until the 1970s, when NASA began recruiting research scientists and engineers for the astronaut-training program that women finally entered training. The first class of six women chosen for NASA's astronaut program were physician Anna Fisher, biochemist Shannon Lucid, electrical engineer Judith Resnik (who died in the Challenger shuttle explosion in 1986), physicist Sally Ride, physician Margaret Rhea Seddon, and geologist Kathryn Sullivan.

Women in Space

Transcript

Many more women have been through the astronaut-training program than have had the opportunity to fly and been able to log significant numbers of hours in space. Although Shannon Lucid set a record in 1996 for the longest single spaceflight for any astronaut (male or female) with 188 days at the Mir space station, her record was later surpassed by U.S. engineer Sunita Williams who now holds the record for the longest spaceflight by a woman with 195 days spent at the ISS between December 2006 and June 2007. Other NASA female firsts include Eileen Collins as the first woman to pilot a space shuttle on a Discovery mission in 1995 and Peggy Whitson who, in 2007, became the first female commander of the ISS. Whitson also holds two space records as the woman astronaut with most overall hours in space, having logged more than 376 days in space total from her combined trips to the ISS, and as the woman with the most spacewalks, a total of six to date. In 2008, the United States sent [Page 95]its 50th woman into space, mechanical engineer and astronaut Karen Nyberg. Other non-U.S. and non-Russian women who have flown on international or cooperative space missions, as the first female or sometimes first astronaut from their nations, include British engineer Helen Patricia Sharman (1991), Canadian neurologist Roberta Lynn Bondar (1992), Japanese Chiaki Mukai (1994), French engineer and biologist Claudie (André-Deshays) Haigneré (1996), Canadian Julie Payette (1999), Iranian-born U.S. citizen Anousheh Ansari, the first private or civilian space explorer (2006), and Korean Yi So-yeon (2008).

...