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Women in space: for female astronauts and engineers, the push for gender equality on and off Earth isn’t rocket science

  • Women have played crucial roles in space flight, as mathematicians, engineers and astronauts
  • They have mostly taken second place to men, but the advent of space tourism could change that

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Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to travel into space. She remained in orbit for three days on her solo flight, undertaking physiological and psychological tests. Photo: SSPL/Getty Images
James Springer

“Naturally you needed a man with the courage to ride on top of a rocket, and you were grateful that such men existed,” Tom Wolfe wrote in The Right Stuff, his exposé of the astronauts behind Project Mercury in the late 1950s and early ’60s – America’s first space flight programme. They were men who, as Wolfe put it, had “the right stuff”.

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However, a number of the unsung heroes in humanity’s quest in space at that time were women. Dana Ulery became the first female engineer at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1961, and was crucial to the success of John Glenn’s orbital space flight in 1962.

The biographical drama Hidden Figures (2016) highlighted the roles of Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson and Dorothy Vaughan, three mathematicians who also played a vital role in the success of Glenn’s mission.

For former Nasa engineer Beth Moses, who now works in the commercial sector for Virgin Galactic, growing up in Chicago’s suburbs a decade or so after Project Mercury and seeing posters in libraries and televised shuttle launches, space exploration became a personal goal.
Beth Moses is chief astronaut instructor for Virgin Galactic. She previously worked for Nasa.
Beth Moses is chief astronaut instructor for Virgin Galactic. She previously worked for Nasa.
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“I was really fortunate to grow up when there was a robust international human space effort,” Moses says. “Nasa astronauts and even Russian cosmonauts were part of everyday culture. The latest Pepsi commercial had a space shuttle launching.

“I just always knew I wanted to build and fly spacecraft. And that’s probably because I was a little bit of a tomboy and tinkerer, even when I was a very young girl.”

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