46 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
FROMTOP:^ASSOCIATED^ PRESS;^ SOVFOTO/GETTYIMAGES;^ NASANeil Armstrong took one small step for man in 1969, but it
would be decades before NASA made one giant leap for
American women.
The agency’s first team of astronauts, dubbed
the Mercury 7, were selected in 1959 after
passing a strenuous series of fitness and medical
exams. No women were asked to participate,
but a year later, William Randolph Lovelace, the
doctor who had designed the qualifying exams,
invited seasoned pilot Jerrie Cobb to complete
the same qualifiers.
The testing was intense, including having
ice water blasted into her ears to induce
vertigo and a rubber tube slid down her
throat to test her stomach acid. She passed
with flying colors, and within a year, 12 more
female pilots not only had passed, but often
exceeded the test scores of the Mercury 7. Decades later, this
group would be nicknamed the Mercury 13.
Further exams were scheduled at the Naval School of Aviation
Medicine, but were abruptly canceled; without an official NASA
request, the school would not host Lovelace’s privately funded
testing. Cobb set off for Washington, D.C., to lobby for the
project. In 1962, she testified before the House Committee on
Science and Astronautics hearing on sex discrimination, saying,
“There were women on the Mayflower and on the first wagon
trains west, working alongside the men to forge new trails to
new vistas. We ask that opportunity in the pioneering of space.”
But NASA’s policies stood: Astronauts had to be gradu-
ates of military jet test-pilot programs, effectively barring
women. Though over a thousand women had flown during
World War II as part of the Women Airforce Service Pilots, they
were considered civilians, and no branch of the military had
subsequently allowed female pilots.Ultimately, the U.S. suffered a space race defeat when the
Soviets launched cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova into orbit in- Another 20 years would pass before NASA sent Sally Ride
to space aboard the shuttle Challenger, finally realizing the
dream of the Mercury 13.^ D
WOMEN
FIGHT FOR
FLIGHT
T O T H E MOON AND BACK
The Mercury 13 aced the same
tests as male astronauts, but
decades would pass before
American women flew in space.
BY AMBER JORGENSONFrom top: Pilot Jerrie
Cobb was the first
woman to undergo
astronaut testing,
though she never flew
in space. In 1963, Soviet
cosmonaut Valentina
Tereshkova became
the first woman in
space. It took 20 years
for NASA to catch
up, when astronaut
Sally Ride became the
first American woman
in space in 1983.