The stellar women who revolutionized space travel -

Katherine Johnson, born August 26, 1918, was one of the most important mathematicians at NASA during its earliest days, and was one of the first African-American women to be hired at NASA's predecessor, NACA.

Since ancient times, the skies and the stars have evoked senses of wonder and amazement in the human race. From the ancient druids and Babylonians who worshipped the stars, to the Greeks who mapped them out, and even far beyond the great members of the Renaissance who finally began to understand them, space has been on everyone's minds, regardless of what's happening here on the ground.

But it has been tragically forgotten to time what an important and integral role women have played in the modern study and exploration of space. More than simply participating, some of the greatest advancements in space travel, including vast amounts of the science that made it possible in the first place, are all to the credit of the brilliant women who dedicated their lives to the great beyond. 

Want to learn more? Read on to learn the histories of the women who brought us to space and helped us learn while we were up there.

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Katherine Johnson -

Katherine Johnson, born August 26, 1918, was one of the most important mathematicians at NASA during its earliest days, and was one of the first African-American women to be hired at NASA's predecessor, NACA.

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Katherine Johnson -

Johnson, who was one of NASA's indispensable "human computers" before the time of digital computing, manually calculated the orbits and trajectories for numerous historic NASA missions, including Alan Shepard's historic flight as the first American in space.

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Dorothy Vaughan -

Another original member and "human computer" of NASA was Dorothy Vaughan, the first African-American woman to serve as a supervisor of any department at Virginia's Langley Research Center.

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Dorothy Vaughan -

Vaughan, who began her career as a human computer, worked for NASA through the advent of digital computing and personally taught the coding language Fortran to herself and her team of racially integrated mathematicians, the legendary West Area Computers.

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Mary Winston Jackson -

Mary Jackson, born in 1921, was NASA's first Black engineer and quickly rose as far as she could before being offered the position of supervisor. Instead, she accepted a demotion that, while less prestigious than Supervisor, gave her influence over the hiring of NASA employees. In this role, she was able to influence the hiring process and hire a greater number of women.

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Mary Winston Jackson -

Jackson, who passed away in 2005, was posthumously given a Congressional Gold Medal, and NASA's official Washington, DC headquarters were renamed in her honor.

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Valentina Tereshkova -

Russian cosmonaut and former textile factory worker Valentina Tereshkova was the very first woman on Earth to go into space, and as of 2022 remains the youngest woman to fly a solo space mission. 

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Valentina Tereshkova -

Tereshkova's entered space on June 6, 1963, and orbited the Earth 48 times before returning. Although Tereshkova never again returned to space, she remained in the space program as a cosmonaut instructor and graduated from the Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy in October 1969.

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Sally Ride -

About two decades after Tereshkova's flight, physicist Sally Ride made American history in 1983 by becoming the first woman from the United States to go into space. She is also, as of 2022, the only known member of the LGBTQ community to go to space. Ride kept her orientation secret during her career out of fear of the consequences, but allowed her longtime partner, tennis player Tam O'Shaughnessy, to disclose their relationship in her obituary.

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Sally Ride -

Ride went to space once more after her first historic flight, and spent the rest of her life as a professor and scholar of physics while also becoming a massively influential role model for young women and girls across the world.

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Kitty Joyner -

Kitty Joyner was a woman of firsts. Not only was she NACA's first female engineer, a position she filled in 1939, but she was also the first woman to graduate from the University of Virginia's engineering program.

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Kitty Joyner -

Kitty Joyner continued to work at NACA and NASA until 1971, supervising engineering projects and making great strides in research that led to the advent of supersonic flight.

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Svetlana Savitskaya -

Nineteen years after Valentina Tereshkova made history as the first woman in space, fellow Russian Svetlana Savitskaya became the second and also claimed some firsts of her own.

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Svetlana Savitskaya -

On Savitskaya's second visit to space, in 1984, she became the first woman in history to spacewalk and spent 3.5 hours outside of the Salyut 7 space station.

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Peggy Whitson -

Peggy Whitson became the first female commander of the International Space Station in 2007 and would command the ISS again in 2015. As if that weren't enough history-making for one person, Whitson also, as of 2022, holds the American record for the longest time spent in space: a mind-boggling 665 days.

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Peggy Whitson -

In 2008, Whitson narrowly avoided tragedy when the Soyuz TMA-11 craft she was aboard was damaged during re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere, causing the vehicle to land 295 miles (475 kilometers) off-target.

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Yi So-yeon -

Yi So-yeon became the first South Korean woman in space in 2008 when she made the trip to the International Space Station with two other Russian cosmonauts.

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Yi So-yeon -

Aboard the ISS, So-yeon conducted various experiments on the behavior of fruit flies in space, face swelling in zero gravity, as well as weather patterns on Earth.

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Kathryn Sullivan -

The first American woman to spacewalk, also in 1984, just a few months after Savitskaya, was Kathryn Sullivan. A subsequent space mission of Sullivan's was particularly important: it was the mission that launched the Hubble telescope.

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Kathryn Sullivan -

Sullivan helped launch the telescope in 1990, and made numerous additional trips to aid in its maintenance and repair. Before retiring in 1993, Sullivan clocked in a total of 532 hours of time in space.

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Mae Jemison -

Physician and engineer Mae Jemison, born in Decatur, Alabama, was chosen for the NASA astronaut program in 1987, and five years later she became the first Black woman in space.

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Mae Jemison -

Mae Jemison was an indispensable researcher for NASA, conducting experiments on everything from motion sickness to bone cell structure during her mission. Jemison resigned from NASA after her first flight and went on to make great strides in sickle cell research. She also dedicated her time to making STEM education more accessible to children around the world.

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Chiaki Mukai -

Present during the same 1992 space mission as Jemison, which was a cooperative mission between the United States and Japan, was Chiaki Mukai, the first Japanese woman to enter space.

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Chiaki Mukai -

Mukai spent a total of 29 days in space during her career with JAXA, the Japanese space agency, and has since led a successful and influential career as a research scientist. In 2015, she was named Vice President of the Tokyo University of Science.

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Liu Yang -

In 2012, on the 49th anniversary of Valentina Tereshkova's historic flight as the first woman in space, Liu Yang became the first Chinese woman to leave Earth's atmosphere on the Shenzhou 9 mission to Tiangong-1, China's first space station.

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Liu Yang -

Liu Yang was already a well-respected major in the Chinese Air Force by the time of her space flight. Aboard the Tiangong-1, Yang conducted various useful studies concerning medicine in space.

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Ellen Ochua -

In 1993, Los Angeles-born Ellen Ochua spent nine days in orbit aboard the Discovery space shuttle, making her the first Hispanic-American to ever go to space.

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Ellen Ochua -

Aboard the Discovery, Ochua studied the Ozone layer from above. Twenty years later, in 2013, she became the first Latinx individual to be named Director of Johnson's Space Center, and only the second-ever woman to hold the title.

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Judith Resnik -

Judith Resnik, a native of Akron, Ohio, was a high achiever from a young age. In high school, she was the only female student to score perfectly on the national SAT exams in her year, and only the 16th young woman ever to do so. Later on, she would become the first Jewish person to enter space.

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Judith Resnik -

In 1984, Resnik served as mission specialist aboard the Discovery shuttle. While her first mission was a success, Resnik died tragically along with her six other crew members in the 1986 Challenger shuttle disaster, during which the shuttle broke into pieces only 73 seconds into its flight.

Sources: (Sky at Night Magazine) (Interesting Engineering) (Britannica)

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