Females in space

To be sure, the first female in space was not a woman, but a canine. To read about Laika, please see the article on Space Today Online.

In comments on The far side of our moon (which embedded video I took out because I couldn't "fix" the HTML to prevent the video's automatically playing anytime this blog was accessed - link still there, though), Hattie and Joy commented about women in space - they were all for the women. Now, from AmericaSpace: For a nation that explores, comes an article, “For All Womankind”: America’s First Female Astronauts By Ben Evans.

The articles comprises photos and a few paragraphs, each, about the first five American women who flew in space:

1) Sally Ride (Physics PhD from Stanford and first American woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova having been the first woman in space and Svetlana Yevgenyevna Savitskaya having been the second);

2) the late Judy Resnik (Electrical Engineering PhD from U of Maryland, second American woman in space - flying only one successful flight, Mission 41D - and a member of the ill-fated Challenger Mission 51L crew);

3) Kathryn Dwyer Sullivan (Geology PhD from Dalhousie U and first American woman to space walk, Svetlana Yevgenyevna Savitskaya having been the first woman to space walk);

4) Anna Lee Sims (AKA Anna Lee Tingle Fisher, MD from UCLA and first mother in space); and

5) Margaret Rhea Seddon (MD from U of Tennesee and first to give birth to a child whose parents had both been in space).

The article, toward the end, gives some of the achievements of women in space (I've bolded some phrases, for emphasis.)

Today, it is commonplace for female astronauts to have flown several times in orbit. Last week’s untimely passing of Janice Voss [see below] shows us how much they have achieved, in such a short span of time, for she was the fifth woman in history to chalk up five missions…a remarkable achievement, when one remembers that the world record is only seven. A woman (Susan Helms) jointly holds the record for the longest single EVA, whilst another (Peggy Whitson, the incumbent chief of NASA’s astronaut office) has more than a year of her life off the planet. Women have participated extensively in many historic missions: Yelena Kondakova and Shannon Lucid were the first from their respective nations to fly long-duration flights, Eileen Collins was the first female spacecraft commander and Peggy Whitson the first female space station commander – and, with South Korean astronaut Soyeon Yi, flew the first re-entry in which women outnumbered men on a crew.

Yet there is still a long way to go. Women today actually represent a mere ten percent of the 520 or so unique spacefarers who have journeyed beyond the thin veil of Earth’s atmosphere and into the ethereal blackness that lies beyond. When Shannon Walker flew to the International Space Station in June 2010 – becoming the most recent ‘rookie’ female astronaut to enter orbit – she was only the 55th of her gender to do so. With the end of the Shuttle era, fewer flight opportunities are now available for women and it must be expected that a decline in their number will be inevitable. In the foreseeable future, an average of just one female astronaut or cosmonaut, per annum – Sunita Williams in 2012, Karen Nyberg in 2013 and Yelena Serova in 2014 – will follow in the footsteps of their predecessors.

From Janice Voss's obituary at The Washington Post:

Janice Voss, a NASA astronaut who first worked for the space agency as a teenager and flew five shuttle missions in seven years, died Feb. 6 in Scottsdale, Ariz., where she was receiving treatment for breast cancer. She was 55.

Comments

[Hattie]

I didn't realize that some women have been on many missions. That is nice to know.

[Darlene]

I guess it's true that "You've come a long way ,Baby" but we still have a long way to go.

[Cop Car]

Hattie and Darlene--In our next lives, shall we be space workers?