Who was the first female to go to space?
Women in space
Women of many nationalities have worked in space. The first woman in space, Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, flew in 1963. Space flight programs were slow to employ women, and only began to include them from the 1980s. Most women in space have been United States citizens, with missions on the Space Shuttle and on the International Space Station. Three countries maintain active space programs that include women: China, Russia, and the United States of America. In addition, a number of other countries — Canada, France, India, Iran, Italy, Japan, South Korea, and the United Kingdom — have sent women into orbit or space on Russian or US missions.
Valentina Tereshkova
In order to join the Cosmonaut Corps, Tereshkova was honorarily inducted into the Soviet Air Force and thus she also became the first civilian to fly in space.
Peggy Whitson
Peggy Whitson arrived at the International Space Station on November 19, 2016, on Expedition 50/51, which was launched on November 17, 2016, from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. She became the commander of Expedition 51. With the launch of Expedition 50/51 with her on it, Whitson, at age 56, became the oldest woman to fly into space. During the mission, she broke the record for cumulative time spent in space by a U.S. astronaut, surpassing the previous record of 534 days set by Jeff Williams. In early April 2017, her mission was extended by an additional 3 months at the International Space Station. On September 3, she returned in a previously vacant seat on the Soyuz capsule accompanied by NASA's Jack Fischer and Fyodor Yurchikhin of Roscosmos.
Chiaki Mukai
In 1985, Mukai was selected as one of three Japanese Payload Specialist candidates for the First Material Processing Test (Spacelab-J) which flew aboard STS-47. She also served as a back-up payload specialist for the Neurolab (STS-90) mission. Mukai has logged over 566 hours in space. She flew aboard STS-65 in 1994 and STS-95 in 1998. She is the first Japanese woman to fly in space, and the first Japanese citizen to fly twice.
JoAnn H. Morgan
JoAnn Hardin Morgan (December 4, 1940) is an American aerospace engineer who was a trailblazer in the United States space flight program as the first female engineer at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) John F. Kennedy Space Center and the first woman to serve as a senior executive at Kennedy Space Center. For her work at NASA, Morgan was honored by U.S. President Bill Clinton as a Meritorious Executive in 1995 and 1998. Prior to her retirement in 2003, she held various leadership positions over 40 years in the manned space flight programs at NASA. Morgan served as the director of the External Relations and Business Development during her final years at the space center.
Marion Dietrich
While the women waited for the next phase of their program in July 1961, the testing was halted without warning or explanation. It would be two more decades before the United States launched its first woman into space, Sally Ride, an astrophysicist turned astronaut.
Forced abortion of Feng Jianmei
Several commentators have compared Feng Jianmei to Liu Yang, who was in the news at roughly the same time for becoming the first Chinese female in space. On June 17, the "Tea Leaf Nation" blog published a story entitled "Netizens Reflect As One Chinese Woman Touches Heaven, Another Hell". The story, focused on a widely distributed Sina Weibo post, features pictures of Feng and Liu side by side, and the blogger wrote in the caption "The stark contrast between the fates of [the] two women ... is the clearest illustration of the torn state of this nation." The post was quickly re-tweeted by famous blogger Han Han. By the time the government deleted both posts, the information had already been shared 70,000 times in the first 24 hours. "The International Herald Tribune" immediately picked up the story, stating, "The gruesome abortion incident was cast this weekend against China’s successful launching of its first female astronaut. The sad irony of the two women’s situations was not lost on Chinese netizens." Two days later, the "Global Post" published the story and commented, "leave it to Sina Weibo to point out what's important", explaining that the juxtaposition of the two new stories "[highlights] China's current troubled and contradictory state ... Some Chinese women get launched into space, others receive injections that kill their unborn child."
StarPeace Project
Anousheh Ansari is an advisor to the StarPeace project. She was the first woman from the Middle East to go into space, and the first Iranian. Ansari was the fourth self-funded space tourist and the first self-funded woman to fly to the International Space Station.
Post–civil rights era in African-American history
The 1992 Los Angeles riots erupted after the officers accused of beating Rodney King were acquitted. In 1992 Mae Carol Jemison became the first African-American woman to travel in space when she went into orbit aboard the Space Shuttle "Endeavour". Carol Moseley Braun (D-California) became the first African-American woman to be elected to the United States Senate on November 3, 1992.
Andriyan Nikolayev
On 3 November 1963, he married Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman to fly in space "(see Vostok 6)". They had one daughter, Elena Andriyanovna (now a doctor of medicine), before their marriage collapsed. However, it was not until 1982 that they divorced.
Samantha Cristoforetti
Samantha Cristoforetti (; born 26 April 1977 in Milan) is an Italian European Space Agency astronaut, Italian Air Force pilot and engineer. She holds the record for the longest uninterrupted spaceflight of a European astronaut (199 days, 16 hours), and until June 2017 held the record for the longest single space flight by a woman until this was broken by Peggy Whitson. She is also the first Italian woman in space. Samantha Cristoforetti is also known as the first person who brewed an espresso in space.
Kathryn D. Sullivan
Kathryn Dwyer Sullivan (born October 3, 1951) is an American geologist and a former NASA astronaut. A crew member on three Space Shuttle missions, she was the first American woman to walk in space on October 11, 1984. She was Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration after being confirmed by the U.S. Senate on March 6, 2014. Sullivan's tenure ended on January 20, 2017 with the swearing in of President Donald Trump. Following completion of her service at NOAA, she was designated as the 2017 Charles A. Lindbergh Chair of Aerospace History at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum., and has also served as a Senior Fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies.
Chinese women in space
On 16 June 2013, the 50th anniversary of the launch of Vostok 6, two women were in space, one of them Chinese, the second Chinese woman in space, Wang Yaping, aboard Tiangong-1 on the 3-man Shenzhou 10 mission, and Karen Nyberg on the 6-man Expedition 36 aboard the International Space Station. The mission had lifted off on 11 June 2013.
RKK Energiya museum
Amongst the exhibits are the recovered capsule from the Vostok 1 mission with which Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space, the Vostok 6 capsule in which Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space, the Voskhod 2 capsule from which the first spacewalk was performed by Aleksei Leonov, and the Soyuz 19 capsule used in the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project.
Chinese women in space
In 2012, China became the third nation to send women into space with its own space program, after the Soviet Union/Russia and the United States, 49 years after the first female cosmonaut, Valentina Tereshkova.
Expedition 57
Originally NASA Astronaut Jeanette Epps was assigned as flight engineer for Expeditions 56 and 57, becoming the first African American space station crew member and the 15th African American to fly in space, but on January 16, 2018, NASA announced that Epps had been replaced by her backup Serena M. Auñón-Chancellor.
International Space Station
Anousheh Ansari became the first Iranian in space and the first self-funded woman to fly to the station. Officials reported that her education and experience make her much more than a tourist, and her performance in training had been "excellent." Ansari herself dismisses the idea that she is a tourist. She did Russian and European studies involving medicine and microbiology during her 10-day stay. The documentary "Space Tourists" follows her journey to the station, where she fulfilled "an age-old dream of man: to leave our planet as a "normal person" and travel into outer space."
Lottie Dolls
Stargazer Lottie was the first doll to ever make it into space – voyaging alongside British astronaut Tim Peake. Peake even tweeted about Lottie while in space. Lottie spent 264 days aboard the International Space Station during the Principia Mission. 
Stargazer Lottie comes with a telescope, tripod, solar system collector cards, and an additional sheet on notable women in Astronomy.
European Astronaut Corps
All of the current members of the corps have flown to space, except Maurer. All flown members except Jean-François Clervoy have visited the ISS. German astronaut Alexander Gerst is the member of the corps who has accumulated the most time in space with 362 days 1 hour and 50 minutes. He is the record holder for all the European astronauts in history. The oldest is Hans Schlegel, born in 1951. The corps currently includes one woman, Samantha Cristoforetti, who formerly held the record for the longest spaceflight by a woman. Only two other women have been members of the corps. Marianne Merchez who never flew, and Claudie Haigneré who resigned after two missions to start a political career in France.
List of spaceflight records
NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson holds the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman when she surpassed Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti's 199 days, 16 hours during Expedition 52 in 2017. She returned to Earth in September 2017, having spent 289 days, 5 hours and 1 minute in space. In third place is American astronaut Sunita Williams with 195 days on the ISS, where she was a member of Expedition 14/Expedition 15 (2006–2007).
Human spaceflight
Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to orbit the Earth on June 16, 1963.
Women in space
In addition to U.S. citizens, US rockets have launched international astronauts. Roberta Bondar (in 1992) and Julie Payette (in 1999 and 2009) from Canada, Kalpana Chawla of India (1997 and 2003), and Chiaki Mukai (in 1994 and 1998) and Naoko Yamazaki (in 2010) of Japan flew as part of the US space program.
Sally Ride
Sally Kristen Ride (May 26, 1951 – July 23, 2012) was an American astronaut, physicist, and engineer. Born in Los Angeles, she joined NASA in 1978 and became the first American woman in space in 1983. Ride was the third woman in space overall, after USSR cosmonauts Valentina Tereshkova (1963) and Svetlana Savitskaya (1982). Ride remains the youngest American astronaut to have traveled to space, having done so at the age of 32. After flying twice on the Orbiter "Challenger", she left NASA in 1987. She worked for two years at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Arms Control, then at the University of California, San Diego as a professor of physics, primarily researching nonlinear optics and Thomson scattering. She served on the committees that investigated the "Challenger" and "Columbia" space shuttle disasters, the only person to participate in both. Ride died of pancreatic cancer on July 23, 2012.
Women in space
China's first female astronaut candidates, chosen in 2010 from the ranks of fighter pilots, were required to be married mothers. The Chinese stated that married women were "more physically and psychologically mature" and that the rule that they had have had children was because of concerns that spaceflight would harm their reproductive organs (which includes embryos). The unknown nature of the effects of spaceflight on women was also noted. However, the director of the China Astronaut Centre has stated that marriage is a preference but not a strict limitation. Part of why they were so strict was because it was their first astronaut selection and they were trying be "extra cautious". China's first woman astronaut, Liu Yang, was married but had no children at the time of her flight in June 2012.Anousheh Ansari was the fourth overall self-funded space traveler, and the first self-funded woman to fly to the International Space Station. She flew to the station in 2006 on the Soyuz TMA-9 spacecraft. Her mission launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on 18 September 2006 at 08:09 MSD (04:09 UTC), docked with the ISS at 09:21 MSD (05:21 UTC) on 20 September, and returned to Earth on 21 April 2007. Soyuz TMA-9 transported two-thirds of ISS Expedition 14 to the space station along with Ansari. Ansari performed several experiments on behalf of the European Space Agency.
Women of the Apollo Program
Female members of the Apollo Space Program included Bobbie Johnson, Judith Love Cohen, Ann Dickson, and Ann Maybury. Apollo 11 landed on the Moon on July 20, 1969.
Zhanna Yorkina
In December 1961, the selection of female cosmonaut trainees was authorized by the Soviet government, with the specific intention of ensuring the first woman in space was a Soviet citizen. In February 1962, Yorkina was selected as a member of a group of five female cosmonauts to be trained for a solo spaceflight in a Vostok spacecraft. Like several others in the group, she was an amateur parachutist. In 1963, she married Valeri N. Sergeychik, which whom she had two children, Valeri V. and Svetlana V, in violation of Korolyov's rule that female cosmonauts must put off having children and dedicate themselves to the space program.
Tereshkova Street, Novosibirsk
In 1964, the street was named after Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman to have flown in space.
Soviet space program
While the government and the Communist Party used the program's successes as propaganda tools after they occurred, systematic plans for missions based on political reasons were rare, one exception being Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, on Vostok 6 in 1963. Missions were planned based on rocket availability or ad hoc reasons, rather than scientific purposes. For example, the government in February 1962 abruptly ordered an ambitious mission involving two Vostoks simultaneously in orbit launched "in ten days time" to obscure John Glenn's Mercury-Atlas 6 that month; the program could not do so until August, with Vostok 3 and Vostok 4.
1671 Chaika
This minor planet was named in honor of Soviet cosmonaut Valentina "Chaika" Tereshkova (born 1937). Tereshkova received the call sign "Chaika" – the Russian word for seagull – as she was as the first woman to fly in space. The asteroid's name was proposed by the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy (ITA) in St Petersburg. The official was published by the Minor Planet Center before November 1977 ().
Kathleen Rubins
Kathleen Hallisey "Kate" Rubins (born October 14, 1978) is a NASA astronaut. She became the 60th woman to fly in space when she launched on a Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station on July 6, 2016. She returned to Earth on October 30, 2016 aboard a Soyuz. She was a crew member of Expedition 48 and Expedition 49 of the International Space Station.
Svetlana Savitskaya
Svetlana Yevgenyevna Savitskaya (; born 8 August 1948) is a retired Soviet aviator and cosmonaut who flew aboard Soyuz T-7 in 1982, becoming the second woman in space. On her 1984 mission she became the first woman to fly to space twice, and the first woman to perform a spacewalk. She set several FAI world records as a pilot.
Janice E. Voss
Janice Elaine Voss (October 8, 1956 – February 6, 2012) was an American engineer and a NASA astronaut. She flew in space five times, jointly holding the record for American women. Voss died on February 6, 2012, from breast cancer.
CoCo Brown
Brown is scheduled to go on a trip to outer space in 2016, which will last approximately one hour. The flight will be arranged by the Space Expedition Corporation (SXC), a Netherlands-based space tourism company. This opportunity for her arose in 2012 when she received a "space luncheon" invite by a concierge she knew after another person canceled their appearance at the event. She began training for the flight, with help from XCOR Aerospace, that same year. In preparation for the trip, she had to earn a pilot's license. She will be the flight's co-pilot. If the trip takes place as planned, it would make her the first pornographic actress in space as well as the fourth African American woman, after Mae Jemison, Stephanie Wilson, and Joan Higginbotham.
Zhanna Yorkina
The honor of being the first woman in space was eventually given to Valentina Tereshkova, who was launched into Earth orbit in June 1963 aboard Vostok 6. Tereshkova's backup was Irina Solovyova, with Valentina Ponomaryova in a supporting 'second backup' role. Yorkina had been taken out of the running for the mission as she had performed poorly in the simulator.
List of Chinese astronauts
The People's Liberation Army Astronaut Corps was established in 1998 for the selection of Shenzhou program astronauts. In 2003, Yang Liwei was launched aboard Shenzhou 5, becoming the first person sent into space by the Chinese space program. This achievement made China the third country to independently send humans into space. During the Shenzhou 7 mission in 2008, Zhai Zhigang became the first Chinese citizen to carry out a spacewalk. In 2012, Liu Yang became the first Chinese woman to be launched into space when she was launched aboard Shenzhou 9.
Sally Ride EarthKAM
Sally Ride EarthKAM (Earth Knowledge Acquired by Middle school students) is a NASA educational outreach program started in 1996. The program, initiated by Dr. Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, allows students to direct a digital camera aboard the International Space Station (ISS) to take photographs of specific places on Earth.
Shannon Lucid
Shannon Matilda Wells Lucid (born January 14, 1943) is an American biochemist and a retired NASA astronaut. At one time, she held the record for the longest duration stay in space by an American, as well as by a woman. She has flown in space five times including a prolonged mission aboard the Mir space station in 1996; she is the only American woman to have served aboard Mir.
Marjorie Townsend
Marjorie Trees Townsend (née Rhodes; March 12, 1930 – April 4, 2015) was an American electrical engineer, and the first woman to manage a spacecraft launch for NASA.
Peggy Whitson
Peggy Annette Whitson (born February 9, 1960) is an American biochemistry researcher, retired NASA astronaut, and former NASA Chief Astronaut. Her first space mission was in 2002, with an extended stay aboard the International Space Station as a member of Expedition 5. Her second mission launched October 10, 2007, as the first female commander of the ISS with Expedition 16. She was on her third long-duration space flight and was the commander of the International Space Station for Expedition 51, before handing over command to Fyodor Yurchikhin on June 1, 2017.
Kalpana Chawla
Kalpana Chawla (March 17, 1962 – February 1, 2003) was an American astronaut, engineer and the first female of Indian origin to go to space. She first flew on Space Shuttle "Columbia" in 1997 as a mission specialist and primary robotic arm operator. In 2003, Chawla was one of the seven crew members who died in the Space Shuttle "Columbia" disaster when the aircraft disintegrated during its re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere. Chawla was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, and several streets, universities and institutions have been named in her honor.
Shannon Lucid
Lucid was awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in December 1996 (for her mission to Mir), making her the tenth person and first woman to be given that honor. In 1993 she was inducted into the Oklahoma Women's Hall of Fame. In 1998, Lucid was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
Anna Lee Fisher
Anna Lee Fisher (née Tingle) (born August 24, 1949) is an American chemist, emergency physician, and a former NASA astronaut. Formerly married to fellow astronaut Bill Fisher, and the mother of two children, in 1984 she became the first mother in space. Fisher was formerly the oldest active American astronaut. During her career at NASA, she has been involved with three major programs: the Space Shuttle, the International Space Station and the Orion project.
Ellen Ochoa
Ochoa became the first Hispanic woman in the world to go to space when she served on a nine-day mission aboard the shuttle Discovery in 1993. The purpose of the shuttle mission was to study the Earth's ozone layer. A veteran of four space flights, Ochoa has logged nearly 40d 19h 36m in space. She was a mission specialist on STS-56 (1993), was payload commander on STS-66, and was mission specialist and flight engineer on STS-96 and STS-110 in 2002. Ochoa was in Mission Control during the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster and was one of the first personnel informed of television coverage showing Columbia's disintegration.
Space exploration
Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, orbited Earth 48 times aboard "Vostok 6" on 16 June 1963.
Women in space
Naoko Yamazaki became the second Japanese woman to fly into space with her launch on April 5, 2010, Yamazaki entered space on the shuttle "Discovery" as part of mission STS-131. She returned to Earth on April 20, 2010. Yamazaki worked on ISS hardware development projects in the 1990s. She is an aerospace engineer and also holds a Masters degree in that field. She was selected for astronaut training in 1999 and was certified by 2001. She was a mission specialist on her 2010 space shuttle flight, and spent 362 hours in space. Yamazaki worked on robotics and transitioned through the reorganization of Japanese spaceflight organization when 2003 NASDA merged with ISAS (Institute of Space & Astronautic Science) and NAL (National Aerospace Laboratory of Japan). The new organization was called JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency).
Tagore Baal Niketan Sr. Sec. School, Karnal
Dr. Kalpana Chawla, the first Indian American astronaut and first Indian born woman in space is perhaps Tagore Baal Niketan's most famous alumni. Born in Karnal, India in 1962, she completed her schooling from Tagore Baal Niketan in 1976. She was one of the 7 crew members aboard the ill-fated space shuttle Columbia when it disintegrated upon re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere over Texas in 2003 killing all crew members.Scholarships are awarded to the meritorious students and financial help is also provided to needy students. Merit certificates and prizes are awarded to the deserving students in various fields. Fee concession/scholarships are granted regularly for scholastic excellence and Co-Curricular activities.
Kalpana Chawla
Her first space mission began on November 17, 1997, as part of the six-astronaut crew that flew the Space Shuttle "Columbia" flight STS-87. Chawla was the first Indian woman to fly in space. She spoke the following words while traveling in the weightlessness of space, "You are just your intelligence." On her first mission, Chawla traveled over 10.4 million miles (16737177.6 km) in 252 orbits of the earth, logging more than 372 hours (15 Days and 12 Hours) in space. During STS-87, she was responsible for deploying the Spartan satellite which malfunctioned, necessitating a spacewalk by Winston Scott and Takao Doi to capture the satellite. A five-month NASA investigation fully exonerated Chawla by identifying errors in software interfaces and the defined procedures of flight crew and ground control. After the completion of STS-87 post-flight activities, Chawla was assigned to technical positions in the astronaut office to work on the space station.
Astronaut
The first human in space was Soviet Yuri Gagarin, who was launched on April 12, 1961, aboard Vostok 1 and orbited around the Earth for 108 minutes. The first woman in space was Soviet Valentina Tereshkova, who launched on June 16, 1963, aboard Vostok 6 and orbited Earth for almost three days.
Space Tourists
The film accompanies the first female space traveler who was not a space agency employee, Anousheh Ansari, who paid US $20 million for her flight into space.
Women in space
Russian Yelena V. Kondakova became the first woman to travel for both the Soyuz programme and on the Space Shuttle. Yelena Serova became the first female Russian cosmonaut to visit the International Space Station on 26 September 2014.
Soyuz TM-24
Soyuz TM-24 was the 27th expedition to Mir. Soyuz TM-24 carried a crew of three. The crew consisted of Cosmonauts Valery Korzun and Aleksandr Kaleri, and the first French woman in space, Claudie André-Deshays. They joined American astronaut Shannon Lucid and Mir 21 crewmates Yuri Onufriyenko and Yuri Usachev. André-Deshays carried out biological and medical experiments on Mir for 16 days (the "Cassiopée" mission) before returning to Earth with Onufriyenko and Usachev.
Liu Wang
Liu Wang was selected to be part of the crew of Shenzhou 9, the first manned mission to the first Chinese space station, Tiangong 1. Also on the mission is Jing Haipeng, the first Chinese repeat space traveller, and the first Chinese female astronaut, Liu Yang.
Women in space
The first woman in space was a Soviet cosmonaut. Valentina Tereshkova launched with the Vostok 6 mission on June 16, 1963. The first woman to walk in space was also a cosmonaut: Svetlana Savitskaya was on her second mission when she space-walked on July 17, 1984 as part of Salyut 7-EP2.
Jaleh Daie
Jaleh Daie is an American scientist, educator and entrepreneur. She has worked as a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and at Rutgers University. Daie was the first woman to serve on the U.S. Space Foundation board of directors. She was inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame in 1996.
Wally Funk
Funk always wanted to be an astronaut. She volunteered to be a part of the Women in Space Program in 1961, becoming one of the Mercury 13. Like the other participants in the program, Funk was put through rigorous physical and mental testing. In one test, volunteers were placed in sensory deprivation tanks. Funk was in the tank, without hallucinating, for 10 hours and 35 minutes, a record. She passed her tests and was qualified to go into space. She scored higher than John Glenn did in his testing and was the third best in the Mercury 13 program. Despite this, the program was canceled before the women were to undergo their last test.
Vostok 6
Vostok 6 (, "Orient 6" or "East 6") was the first human spaceflight to carry a woman, cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, into space.
Human spaceflight
Sally Ride became the first American woman in space in 1983. Eileen Collins was the first female shuttle pilot, and with shuttle mission STS-93 in 1999 she became the first woman to command a U.S. spacecraft.
Valentina Tereshkova
After watching the successful launch of Vostok 5 on 14 June, Tereshkova began final preparations for her own flight. She was 26 at the time. On the morning of 16 June 1963, Tereshkova and her backup Solovyova were both dressed in spacesuits and taken to the launch pad by bus. Following the tradition set by Gagarin, Tereshkova also urinated on the bus tire, becoming the first woman to do so. After completing her communication and life support checks, she was sealed inside the Vostok. After a two-hour countdown, Vostok 6 launched faultlessly, and Tereshkova became the first woman in space. Her call sign in this flight was Chaika (English: Seagull; ), later commemorated as the name of an asteroid, 1671 Chaika.
Although Tereshkova experienced nausea and physical discomfort for much of the flight, she orbited the earth 48 times and spent almost three days in space. With a single flight, she logged more flight time than the combined times of all American astronauts who had flown before that date. Tereshkova also maintained a flight log and took photographs of the horizon, which were later used to identify aerosol layers within the atmosphere.
Jeannette Piccard
Jeannette Ridlon Piccard (pronounced "janet pekar"; 1895–1981) was an American high-altitude balloonist, and in later life an Episcopal priest. She held the women's altitude record for nearly three decades, and according to several contemporaneous accounts was regarded as the first woman in space.
Soyuz MS-03
Soyuz MS-03 launched with Expedition 50/51 on November 17, 2016 20:17 UTC. Astronaut Peggy Whitson, at age 56, became the oldest woman to fly into space.
Women in space
By 2015 four women were classified as "space flight participants": Helen Sharman, Claudie Haigneré (born André-Deshays), Anousheh Ansari, and Yi So-yeon.
Helen Sharman
Helen Patricia Sharman, CMG, OBE, HonFRSC (born 30 May 1963) is a British chemist who became the first British astronaut and the first woman to visit the "Mir" space station in 1991.
STS-7
STS-7 was NASA's seventh Space Shuttle mission, and the second mission for the Space Shuttle "Challenger". During the mission, "Challenger" deployed several satellites into orbit. The shuttle launched from Kennedy Space Center on June 18, 1983, and landed at Edwards Air Force Base on June 24. STS-7 was notable for carrying Sally Ride, America's first female astronaut.STS-7 began on June 18, 1983, with an on-time liftoff at 7:33 am EDT. It was the first spaceflight of an American woman (Sally K. Ride), the largest crew to fly in a single spacecraft up to that time (five people), and the first flight that included members of NASA's Group 8 astronaut class, which had been selected in 1978 to fly the Space Shuttle. President Ronald Reagan also sent his personal favourite Jelly Belly jelly beans with the astronauts, making them the first jelly beans in space.
Shannon Lucid
Lucid is best known for her fifth spaceflight, when she spent 188 days in space, from March 22 to September 26, 1996, including 179 days aboard "Mir", the Russian space station. Both to and from Mir, she travelled on Space Shuttle Atlantis, launching on STS-76 and returning on STS-79. Her stay on Mir was not expected to last so long but her return was delayed twice, extending her stay by about six weeks. During the mission she performed numerous life science and physical science experiments. As a result of her time aboard Mir, she held the record for the most hours in orbit by a non-Russian and most hours in orbit by a woman. On June 16, 2007, her record for longest duration spaceflight by a woman was exceeded by Sunita Williams aboard the International Space Station.
Women in aviation
In 1960, Olga Tarling became the first woman air traffic controller in Australia and Yvonne Pope Sintes and Frankie O'Kane become the first female British air traffic controllers. That same year, Alia Menchari became the first woman Tunisian pilot. In 1961, Lucille Golas attained the first pilot license for a woman in Guyana to assist her husband in his mining business. Asegedech Assefa became the first Ethiopian woman to earn a pilot's license in 1962. That same year, Jacqueline Cochran became the first woman to fly a jet across the Atlantic Ocean.
A privately funded project, of William Lovelace, the Woman in Space Program recruited women pilots in the U.S. to test them for suitability for the space program. Thirteen of the recruits passed NASA's physical requirements. Scheduled for additional testing, the United States Navy canceled use of their facilities as there were no NASA officials involved. Public hearings were held by a special Subcommittee of the House Committee on Science and Astronautics in 1962. Because NASA required all astronauts to attain an engineering degree and be graduates of military jet piloting test programs, none of the women could meet the entry prerequisites. The subcommittee took no action after the hearing. The following year, Valentina Tereshkova, an amateur Russian parachute jumper became the first woman in space.
Women in space
Svetlana Savitskaya was the first woman to go on extravehicular activity (EVA) — after launching on Soyuz T-12 on July 25, 1984 — and the second woman overall to go into space.
Tatyana Kuznetsova
Tatyana Dmitryevna Kuznetsova (; 14 July 1941 – 28 August 2018) was a Soviet cosmonaut. She was the youngest person ever selected by a government human spaceflight program.
Fifth Planet (novel)
One important aspect of the plot is that the Soviet expedition includes the first woman in space. This fictional milestone was eclipsed by reality soon after publication, when Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space on Vostok 6 in June 1963.
Jeannette Piccard
Piccard was the first licensed female balloon pilot in the U.S., and the first woman to fly to the stratosphere. Accompanied by her husband, Jean—a member of the Piccard family of balloonists and the twin brother of Auguste Piccard—she reached a height of during a record-breaking flight over Lake Erie on October 23, 1934, retaining control of the balloon for the entire flight. After her husband's death in 1963, she worked as a consultant to the director of NASA's Johnson Space Center for several years, talking to the public about NASA's work, and was posthumously inducted into the International Space Hall of Fame in 1998.
Joan Higginbotham
Joan Elizabeth Higginbotham (born August 3, 1964) is an American engineer and a former NASA astronaut. She flew aboard Space Shuttle "Discovery" mission STS-116 as a mission specialist and is the third African American woman to go into space, after Mae Jemison and Stephanie Wilson.
Svetlana Savitskaya
On July 17, 1984 Savitskaya launched aboard Soyuz T-12, together with Commander Vladimir Dzhanibekov and research cosmonaut Igor Volk. On July 25, 1984, Savitskaya became the first woman to spacewalk, conducting EVA outside the Salyut 7 space station for 3 hours and 35 minutes, during which she cut and welded metals in space along with her colleague Vladimir Dzhanibekov. Of the 57 Soviet/Russian spacewalkers through 2010, she is the only woman. The return to earth took place on July 29, 1984.
Anousheh Ansari
Anousheh Ansari (; née Raissyan; born September 12, 1966) is an Iranian-American engineer and co-founder and chairwoman of Prodea Systems. Her previous business accomplishments include serving as co-founder and CEO of Telecom Technologies, Inc. (TTI). The Ansari family is also the title sponsor of the Ansari X Prize. On September 18, 2006, a few days after her 40th birthday, she became the first Iranian in space. Ansari was the fourth overall self-funded space tourist, and the first self-funded woman to fly to the International Space Station. Her memoir, "My Dream of Stars", co-written with Homer Hickam, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2010.
Taylor Wang
Taylor Gun-Jin Wang (; born June 16, 1940) is a Chinese American scientist and in 1985, became the first Chinese person to go into space. While an employee of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Wang was a payload specialist on the Space Shuttle Challenger mission STS-51-B.
United States Astronaut Hall of Fame
Over two dozen astronauts from the Space Shuttle program have been inducted since 2001. Among these are Sally Ride, the first American woman in space; Story Musgrave, who flew six missions in the 1980s and 90s; and Francis Scobee, commander of the ill-fated final "Challenger" mission.
List of female spacefarers
A span of 19 years separated the first and second women in space. They were cosmonauts on the Vostok 6 and Soyuz T-7 missions. Though the Soviet Union sent the first two women into space, only four of the women in space have been Russian or Soviet citizens. However, British, French, Italian, Iranian, and South Korean women have all flown as part of the Soviet and Russian space programs. Similarly, women from Canada, India, Japan, and America have all flown under the US space program. A span of one year separated the first and second American women in space. While the first American man in space was separated from the first woman in space by 20 years, a span of one year separated the first and second Chinese women in space, taking place on consecutive missions, Shenzhou 9 and Shenzhou 10.
Kathryn D. Sullivan
In 2014, Sullivan was honored in the Time 100 list. According to John Glenn, "Kathy is not just an ivory-tower scientist. She was part of NASA's first class of female astronauts, selected in 1978, and went on to fly three shuttle missions. She is the first American woman to walk in space and served aboard the mission that deployed the Hubble Space Telescope. That role in helping humanity look outward has not prevented her from looking homeward. The planet is suffering increasingly severe upheavals, at least partly a result of climate change — droughts, floods, typhoons, tornadoes. I believe my good friend Kathy is the right person for the right job at the right time."
Doll
Stargazer Lottie Doll was the first doll to enter space, voyaging alongside British ESA Astronaut Tim Peake. Lottie spent 264 days aboard the International Space Station during the Principa Mission. She was designed by 6-year old Abigail from Canada, when she decided she wanted to help kids become more interested in space and astronomy.
Margaret Rhea Seddon
Margaret Rhea Seddon (born November 8, 1947) is a physician and retired NASA astronaut. After being selected as part of the first group of astronauts to include women, she flew on three Space Shuttle flights: as mission specialist for STS-51-D and STS-40, and as payload commander for STS-58. Both before and after her career in the astronaut program, she has been active in the medical community in Tennessee, Mississippi and Texas.
Valery Korzun
Korzun made his first trip to space on board the Soyuz TM-24 with cosmonaut Alexander Kaleri, and the first French woman in space, Claudie André-Deshays on 17 August 1996. The Soyuz spacecraft lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 13:18:03 UTC. After two days of solo flight, the Soyuz docked with the Mir station on 19 August at 14:50:23 UTC. Korzun and Kaleri became the 22nd resident crew, first together with NASA astronaut Shannon Lucid, later with astronauts John Blaha and Jerry Linenger. On 2 March 1997 Soyuz TM-24 carrying Korzun, Kaleri and ESA astronaut Reinhold Ewald returned to Earth. The Soyuz capsule landed landing 128 km east of Jezkazgan at 06:44 UTC. Korzun spent 196 days, 17 hours and 26 minutes on board Soyuz TM-24 and Mir.
History of spaceflight
Helen Sharman became the first European woman in space aboard the Soyuz TM-12 on May 18, 1991.
Thomas O. Paine
On October 12, 1984, President Ronald Reagan issued Executive Order 12490 that commissioned a panel of experts to investigate and evaluate the future of the national space program. President Ronald Reagan appointed Dr. Paine to be the chairman of this investigation. Rather than naming the commission after himself, as is customary, he chose instead to name it "The National Commission on Space". Members of the 15-member commission included Dr. Luis Alvarez (a winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics), Neil Armstrong (NASA astronaut and the first man on the Moon), Dr. Gerard K. O'Neill (American physicist and space activist), Dr. Kathryn D. Sullivan (Space Shuttle astronaut and first American woman to walk in space), Dr. Jeane Kirkpatrick (political scientist and former United States Ambassador to the United Nations) and Brigadier General Charles E. "Chuck" Yeager (rocket plane pilot and first man to break the sound barrier).
George Abbey
In 1983, he became director of the Flight Crew Operations Directorate, where he continued to be responsible for all space shuttle flight crews and JSC aircraft operations. 
Abbey would select the crews that flew during the early years of the space shuttle. As director of flight operations, he put America’s first woman in space when he assigned Sally Ride to the crew of 1983′s STS-7. 
Abbey was appointed deputy associate administrator for space flight at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. in March 1988.
Nichelle Nichols
The program was a success. Among those recruited were Dr. Sally Ride, the first American female astronaut, and United States Air Force Colonel Guion Bluford, the first African-American astronaut, as well as Dr. Judith Resnik and Dr. Ronald McNair, who both flew successful missions during the Space Shuttle program before their deaths in the Space Shuttle "Challenger" disaster on January 28, 1986. Recruits also included Charles Bolden, the former NASA administrator and veteran of four shuttle missions, Frederick D. Gregory, former deputy administrator and a veteran of three shuttle missions and Lori Garver, former deputy administrator. An enthusiastic advocate of space exploration, Nichols has served since the mid-1980s on the board of governors of the National Space Society, a nonprofit, educational space advocacy organization founded by Dr. Wernher von Braun.
Roberta Bondar
Roberta Bondar (; born December 4, 1945) is Canada's first female astronaut and the first neurologist in space. Following more than a decade as NASA's head of space medicine, Bondar became a consultant and speaker in the business, scientific, and medical communities.
Timeline of space travel by nationality
Since the first human spaceflight by the Soviet Union, citizens of 40 countries have flown in space. For each nationality, the launch date of the first mission is listed. The list is based on the nationality of the person at the time of the launch. Only 3 of the 40 "first flyers" have been women (Helen Sharman for the United Kingdom in 1991, Anousheh Ansari for Iran in 2006, and Yi So-yeon for South Korea in 2008). Only three nations (Soviet Union/Russia, U.S., China) have launched their own manned spacecraft, with the Soviets/Russians and the American programs providing rides to other nations' astronauts. Twenty-six "first flights" occurred on Soviet or Russian flights while the United States carried thirteen.
Jerrie Cobb
Although she never flew in space, Cobb, along with twenty-four other women, underwent physical tests similar to those taken by the Mercury astronauts with the belief that she might become an astronaut trainee. All the women who participated in the program, known as First Lady Astronaut Trainees, were skilled pilots. Dr. Randy Lovelace, a NASA scientist who had conducted the official Mercury program physicals, administered the tests at his private clinic without official NASA sanction. Cobb passed all the training exercises, ranking in the top 2% of all astronaut candidates of both genders.
In 1962, Cobb was called to testify before a Congressional hearing, the Special Subcommittee on the Selection of Astronauts, about women astronauts. Astronaut John Glenn stated at the hearing "men go off and fight the wars and fly the airplanes," and "the fact that women are not in this field is a fact of our social order." Only a few months later, the Soviet Union would send the first woman into space, Valentina Tereshkova. Soon afterward, Tereshkova ridiculed Cobb for her religious beliefs.
Grace Marguerite Hay Drummond-Hay
Grace Marguerite, Lady Hay Drummond-Hay (née Lethbridge, 12 September 1895 – 12 February 1946) was a British journalist, who was the first woman to travel around the world by air (in a zeppelin). Although she was not an aviator herself at first, she contributed to the glamour of aviation and general knowledge of it, by writing articles about her aerial adventures for US newspapers in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
Valentina Ponomaryova
In December 1961, the selection of female cosmonauts was authorized by the Soviet Government, with the specific intention of ensuring the first woman in space was a Soviet citizen. In February 1962 Ponomaryova was selected in a group of five female cosmonauts to be trained for a Vostok flight. The group spent several months in intensive training, concluding with examinations in November 1962, after which the four remaining candidates were commissioned Junior Lieutenants in the Soviet Air Force. Ponomaryova established herself as one of the leading candidates with Valentina Tereshkova and Irina Solovyova, and a joint mission profile was developed that would see two women launched into space, on solo Vostok flights on consecutive days. The honour of being the first woman in space was to be given to Valentina Tereshkova who would launch first on Vostok 5 while Ponomaryova would follow her into orbit on Vostok 6. However, Ponomaryova did not respond with standard Soviet cliches in interviews and her feminism made the Soviet leadership uneasy, and this led to the flight profile being altered in March 1963. Vostok 5 would now carry a male, cosmonaut Valery Bykovsky, flying the joint mission with Tereshkova aboard Vostok 6 in June 1963. Tereshkova's backup was Irina Solovyova, with Ponomaryova in a supporting 'second back-up' role.
Astronaut-politician
In Russia, cosmonaut Yuri Baturin, described by Space.com in 2000 as "Russia's only cosmonaut / politician", became a senior aide to President Boris Yeltsin and served as one of that nation's leading space policy advisors. All four female Russian astronauts have gone on to serve in the State Duma. Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, entered politics in the days of the Soviet Union, serving in parliament and as a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Svetlana Savitskaya, the second woman in space, was elected to the State Duma in 1996 and currently serves as Deputy Chair of the Committee on Defense, in addition to being a member of the Commission on Safety, Defense, and the Fight Against Crime in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union of Belarus and Russia. Yelena Kondakova served in the Duma as a member of the Fatherland – All Russia party, and after the party dissolved, as member of United Russia. However she left United Russia in 2011 as a result of her dissatisfaction with results of internal party elections. Most recently, Yelena Serova, the first female Russian cosmonaut to visit the International Space Station, was elected to serve in the Duma in 2016.
Shenzhou 10
While in orbit, Wang Yaping was one of only two women in space on 16 June 2013, the 50th anniversary of Vostok 6, the first space flight by a woman, Valentina Tereshkova. The other woman in space that day was Karen Nyberg on board the International Space Station
Mercury 13
Although both Cobb and Cochran made separate appeals for years afterward to restart a women's astronaut testing project, the U.S. civil space agency did not select any female astronaut candidates until Astronaut Group 8 in 1978, which selected astronauts for the operational Space Shuttle program. Astronaut Sally Ride became the first American woman in space in 1983 on STS-7, and Eileen Collins was the first woman to pilot the Space Shuttle during STS-63 in 1995. Collins also became the first woman to command a Space Shuttle mission during STS-93 in 1999. In 2005, she commanded NASA's return to flight mission, STS-114. At Collins' invitation, seven of the surviving Lovelace finalists attended her first launch, ten of the FLATs attended her first command mission, and she has flown mementos for almost all of them.
Women in space
In 2012, the Chinese space program sent their first woman to space.
Ellen Ochoa
Ellen Ochoa (born May 10, 1958) is an American engineer, former astronaut and former Director of the Johnson Space Center. Ochoa became director of the center upon the retirement of the previous director, Michael Coats, on December 31, 2012. In 1993 Ochoa became the first Hispanic woman in the world to go to space when she served on a nine-day mission aboard the shuttle Discovery.
Valentina Tereshkova
Before her recruitment as a cosmonaut, Tereshkova was a textile-factory assembly worker and an amateur skydiver. After the dissolution of the first group of female cosmonauts in 1969, she became a prominent member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, holding various political offices. She remained politically active following the collapse of the Soviet Union and is regarded as a hero in post-Soviet Russia and much of the world. Having orbited Earth 48 times, Tereshkova remains the only woman ever to have been on a solo space mission.
Judith Resnik
Resnik was the second American woman in space, after Sally Ride, and fourth overall. She was also the first American Jewish astronaut to go into space, the first Jewish woman and at the time only the second Jew to go to space (after Boris Volynov of the Soviet Union).
Voskhod Spacecraft &quot;Globus&quot; IMP navigation instrument
The Voskhod spacecraft was the second generation of spacecraft designed in the manned Soviet space program, essentially an adaptation of the earlier Vostok spacecraft. It flew two manned missions, Voskhod 1 (world's first multi-crewed mission, launched on 12 October 1964) and Voskhod 2 (featuring the world's first Extra-vehicular activity, or EVA, commonly called a "spacewalk", launched on March 18, 1965). The Voskhod spacecraft—and its "Globus" IMP instruments—is a close derivative of Vostok, which flew six Soviet individuals to low Earth orbit, including the world's first human in space, Yuri Gagarin, and the world's first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova. The main difference between IMP versions 1 and 2 (Vostok spacecraft) and later versions (Voskhod and Soyuz) is the addition of the disc-shaped longitude and latitude indicators.
Women in space
The United States did not have a woman in space until 1983, when astronaut Sally Ride launched with the seventh Space Shuttle mission. Since then more than 40 American women have entered space. Most served on the various Space Shuttle flights from 1983 to 2011.
STS-120
As commander of STS-120, Pamela Melroy became the second woman (after Eileen Collins) to command a space shuttle mission. Additionally, the Expedition 16 crew that received STS-120 was commanded by Peggy Whitson, the first female ISS commander. The flight of STS-120 thus became the first time two female mission commanders were in space at the same time.
Expedition 36
On 2013 June 16, the 50th anniversary of Vostok 6, the first spaceshot by a woman, Valentina Tereshkova, Karen L. Nyberg was one of two women in space, the other being Wang Yaping aboard Tiangong-1 on the Shenzhou 10 mission.
Yelena Serova
Serova is the fourth female cosmonaut to travel to space. The three previous female cosmonauts were Valentina Tereshkova (1963), Svetlana Savitskaya (1982 and 1984), and Yelena Kondakova (1994 and 1997). They represented the former Soviet Union and Russia.
Space exploration
Initially the race for space was often led by Sergei Korolev, whose legacy includes both the R7 and Soyuz—which remain in service to this day. Korolev was the mastermind behind the first satellite, first man (and first woman) in orbit and first spacewalk. Until his death his identity was a closely guarded state secret; not even his mother knew that he was responsible for creating the Soviet space program.