Women's role in space travel.

You knew that of the few people that went to the space over the years, only 68 were women, of which cosmonauts Valentina Tereshkova, Svetlana Savotskaja, and Yelena Kondakova and astronauts Sally Ride, Eileen Collins, and Ellen Ochoa stand out.

Some precursors of space exploration opened the way to those that appeared later and helped to normalize that a woman wore an astronaut suit without that seemed of another world. These are the stories of the 6 women who favored the progress of the space age and have been an inspiration for many girls and young people interested in the space field.

1. Valentina Tereshkova.

Valentina Tereshkova made her first flight on 16 June 1963 on the Vostok-6, becoming the first woman to go into space. Her flight aimed to determine whether women had the same physical and psychological stamina as men in outer space, something Tereshkova confirmed.

2. Kitty O'Brien Joyner.

​She was an American electrical engineer at NACA and then at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). She was hired in 1939 as the first engineer, shortly after graduating as the first woman in the engineering program of the University of Virginia. He worked managing several wind tunnels, including supersonic wind tunnels.

 

3. Dorothy Johnson Vaughan.

​She was an African American mathematician who worked at the NACA agency that preceded NASA; She excelled in the various groups she worked on as the West Computing cluster, a segregated workgroup composed exclusively of African American women and math specialists. And in the project to launch satellites into Scout outer space until he retired from NASA in 1971. She was NASA´s first African-American supervisor and manager.

4. Eileen Collins
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​In February 1995 aboard Discovery Collins made history as the first female pilot of a space shuttle, and again, in 1999 as the first female commander. In addition, he commanded the first mission that NASA launched after the Columbia disaster, in 2003, after two years of interruption of the program.

5. Margaret Hamilton.
​She is a computer scientist, mathematician, and software engineer. She was director of the Software Engineering Division of the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, where she and her team developed on-board navigation software for the Apollo Space Program. Her approach to software design was pioneering for the time, as the requirements of robustness and fault tolerance were a priority for the safety and survival of astronauts during trips to the Moon.

6. Ellen Ochoa.

​She is a computer scientist, mathematician, and software engineer. She was director of the Software Engineering Division of the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, where she and her team developed on-board navigation software for the Apollo Space Program. Her approach to software design was pioneering for the time, as the requirements of robustness and fault tolerance were a priority for the safety and survival of astronauts during trips to the Moon

These women are a total inspiration and examples of hard work, effort, and motivation. It is more than clear that no dream is too big to not fulfill. They showed us that the obstacles did not stop them, but instead inspired them to fight even more.

A bird cannot fly with a single wing. Manned spaceflight cannot progress without the active participation of women.
                                                                          - Valentina Tereshkova