To be sure, women astronauts continue to lag their male peers in terms of milestones, even as NASA and other agencies work hard to overcome the bias of the early space program days. Related: This Pride, be inspired by Sally Ride's legacy "It was very meaningful to me," Whitson told CBS of Ride's pioneering mission, adding that she has been glad of the attention brought to 40th anniversary celebrations this year. Ride was the first American woman to fly in June 1983 and ending up going to space twice. Despite that joking moniker (which in part referred to the near-decade it had been since any astronauts were hired), NASA took its diversity recruitment so seriously that it brought Nichelle Nichols of " Star Trek" fame on board to attract women and Black astronaut candidates.Īmong the women brought on board in that class was Sally Ride, whose estate posthumously disclosed in 2012 that Ride was also the first known LGBTQ+ individual in space. NASA gradually opened up its corps to scientists and then women astronauts, starting with the pioneering "Thirty-Five New Guys" class in 1978. (Decades later, happily, Mercury 13 participant Wally Funk made it to space at age 82, aboard Blue Origin's New Shepard suborbital vehicle.) military facilities that were restricted to men. A 1960s effort to bring in civilian women, known as the Mercury 13, ultimately failed after some of the tests required U.S. The agency recruited its early astronaut corps from the military, which itself had restrictions by gender and race in the 1960s and 1970s during the early days of the space age. The first women in the space program worked in background roles - for example, the Black " Hidden Figures" mathematicians and engineers only latterly hailed for their roles in calculating the trajectories of early human spacecraft. In her formative years, Whitson witnessed a sea change at NASA in terms of female participation.
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