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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Women at NASA | 2/5 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_at_NASA | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T04:39:28.729277+00:00 | kb-cron |
On June 18, 1983, Sally Ride became the first American woman astronaut to travel to space. More than a year later, Judith Resnik flew aboard Space Shuttle Discovery and became the second American woman in space. Kathryn D. Sullivan became the first American woman to perform a spacewalk in 1984. In 1988, Ellen Ochoa joined NASA and became the first Hispanic woman astronaut. Ochoa completed four space shuttle missions aboard Discovery and Atlantis, accumulating nearly 1,000 hours in space. In 1985, Shannon Lucid completed her first spaceflight and by the end of her career had spent 188 days in space. Lucid held the American record for most cumulative days in space until 2002.
In the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster two women died: Christa McAuliffe, who would have been the first teacher in space, and Judith Resnik, the second American woman to fly in space.
=== 1990s === By the 1990s, NASA had expanded its research into the physiological effects of spaceflight on women's bodies. Carolyn Huntoon delivered a keynote address in 1994 at the 2nd Annual Women's Health and Space Luncheon, highlighting NASA's previously unrecognized contributions to women's health research. On February 3, 1995, Colonel Eileen Collins became the first woman to pilot a U.S. spacecraft. During this period, Shannon Lucid, a flight engineer, completed five space missions and served as chief scientist for NASA at its headquarters in Washington, DC. In 1999, Eileen Collins became the first woman to command a Space Shuttle mission.
=== 2000s ===
The 2000s saw a significant increase in women's participation in NASA's planetary missions. Women were increasingly appointed to roles as Co-Investigators and Participating Scientists. The percentage of women in these positions rose from below 10% in the 1990s to approximately 30% by the 2000s, with particular growth in Co-Investigator roles. The 2003 Columbia disaster claimed the lives of two women astronauts, Kalpana Chawla and Laurel Clark, along with the entire STS-107 crew when the shuttle broke apart during reentry on February 1, 2003.
Pamela Melroy completed several missions to the International Space Station aboard the shuttles Discovery and Atlantis. A veteran military pilot with more than 5,000 hours of flight time, Melroy brought extensive aviation experience to her astronaut career. In 2007, Peggy Whitson became the first woman to command the International Space Station. Whitson later became the first woman to serve as Chief of the Astronaut Office and commanded the ISS on two separate occasions. During her time in space, Whitson conducted numerous experiments that advanced space technologies still in use today. Also in 2007, Barbara Morgan became the first teacher to travel to space. Morgan had originally been selected as the backup candidate for the Teacher in Space program in 1985, when Christa McAuliffe was chosen as the primary candidate. Following McAuliffe's death in the 1986 Challenger accident, Morgan was unable to complete her mission until 2007.
=== 2010s–2020s === By the 2010s and 2020s women regularly held senior leadership posts and set mission records. Ellen Ochoa served as director of Johnson Space Center from 2013 to 2018, becoming the center's first Hispanic director and its second woman to lead the center. On October 18, 2019, Christina Koch and Jessica Meir completed the first all-woman spacewalk. Koch then concluded a 328-day mission on February 6, 2020, the longest single spaceflight by a woman to that date. In June 2020 the agency named its headquarters for Mary W. Jackson, followed by a public naming ceremony in February 2021. Pamela Melroy was sworn in as Deputy Administrator of NASA in June 2021, and that same month Vanessa Wyche became director of Johnson Space Center, the first Black woman to lead a NASA center. In February 2023 heliophysicist Nicola Fox was selected to lead the Science Mission Directorate as associate administrator. In January 2022 Caltech named planetary scientist Laurie Leshin director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the lab's first woman director. In April 2021 MiMi Aung led the Ingenuity team to the first powered flight on another world, and in February 2021 Swati Mohan served as guidance, navigation, and control operations lead during Mars 2020 entry, descent, and landing. NASA named the initial Artemis Team in December 2020, which included nine women, and in April 2023 assigned Christina Koch to Artemis II. On October 5, 2022, Nicole Aunapu Mann launched as commander of Crew-5 and became the first Native American woman in space. Loral O'Hara returned on April 6, 2024 after 204 days on the space station. In operations, NASA named Holly Ridings the agency's first female chief flight director in 2018, she moved to Gateway leadership in 2022, and in 2023 the agency selected Emily Nelson as chief flight director. In 2024 Sunita Williams piloted the first crewed flight of Boeing Starliner during the Crew Flight Test, the first time a woman flew on the first flight of a crewed spacecraft. After NASA decided in August 2024 to return Starliner to Earth uncrewed due to technical issues with the spacecraft's propulsion system and concerns about crew safety, Williams and commander Barry Wilmore remained aboard the station and returned with SpaceX's Crew-9 on March 18, 2025.
== Women in Space Program == The Mercury 13 program marked an early attempt to include women in U.S. space programs, though the original Mercury Seven astronauts selected for NASA's first human spaceflight program were all men. Randy Lovelace and Don Flickinger, who were involved in the selection process, considered including women in this project. Lovelace believed that women could perform the same tasks in space as men. In 1960, Lovelace and Flickinger met Jerrie Cobb, who played a major role in recruiting and testing women for the program.