Discover the inspiring stories of women in space exploration

In 1922, back when NASA was known as the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, a female technical employee was hired making her the first female scientist in the U.S. Space agency. Physicist Pearl I. Young paved the way for women to enter into the field of space science as working professionals.

It’s not always about breaking the glass ceiling. Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova went one step further and broke through the Earth’s Exosphere to become the first female astronaut to travel into space. She completed a three-day mission aboard the Vostok 6 spacecraft and is the first woman to orbit the Earth.

18 June 1983 was a special day for America. Astronaut Sally K. Ride made history by becoming the first American woman in space. She spent seven days aboard space shuttle Challenger during NASA’s STS-7 mission.

Aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour's STS-47 was Dr. Mae Carol Jemison, making her the first African American woman in space as a crew member. She conducted numerous life and materials sciences experiments during the eight-day flight.

Astronaut Susan Jane Helms was the first woman to complete a long-duration mission on NASA’s International Space Station. She was also the first woman to complete an 8-hour and 56 minute spacewalk along with fellow astronaut James Shelton Voss.

Eileen M. Collins was the first woman pilot of a space shuttle mission on the STS-63. She also became the first female commander during the historic STS-114. The mission, which was Eileen’s fourth space flight, was dubbed the “Return to Flight” mission since it was the first shuttle mission to fly after the space shuttle Columbia broke apart during reentry on 1 February 2003.

Mary W. Jackson worked for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics’s West Area Computing unit, a group of African American women who manually performed complex mathematical calculations for the program’s engineers. These pioneering women did a significant number of the calculations needed for space flight. Mary went on to become the first black woman to be an engineer at NASA in 1958.

Katherine Johnson was responsible for calculations that made possible the first American orbital space flights, the Apollo missions and the Space Shuttle programme. Her work calculating and analyzing the flight paths of many spacecraft during her career helped send astronauts to the Moon. At age 97, she was awarded America’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, by President Barack Obama.

Mathematician Dorothy Vaughan was the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics first black supervisor. She helped her department transition to computers in the early 1960s by teaching herself and her staff the programming language Fortran.

American aerospace engineer Judith Love Cohen’s work on the Abort-Guidance System is credited with helping save Apollo 13 after an oxygen tank explosion left the Service Module crippled and forced the astronauts to use the Lunar Module as a "lifeboat."

In 1939, Kitty Joyner created history by becoming Langley Research Center’s first female engineer. She was also the first woman to graduate from the University of Virginia after suing the University so she could enter the all-male engineering school.

Dr. Nancy Grace Roman, also known as the "Mother of Hubble", pushed the first major space-based telescope from hopeful speculation to reality. Her duties at NASA involved securing and administering grant funding for different missions. In 2020, NASA announced that the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope would be named the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope after Roman.

Holly Ridings oversaw NASA’s human spaceflight operations through the first commercial crew missions to the International Space Station and the preparation for the Artemis I mission as NASA’s first female chief flight director.

Christina Koch and Jessica Meir made space history when they completed the first-ever spacewalk by an all-woman team in 2019.

Christina Koch, who set a record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman with a total of 328 days in space, is also set to be the first woman to land on the Moon on the Artemis II mission. She is a Mission Specialist among the four astronauts who will venture in the first crewed mission on NASA's path to establishing a long-term presence at the Moon.