38 | New Scientist | 27 July 2019
Breaking the
glass orbit
Space travel has mostly been a male affair.
But the balance is finally starting to shift,
reports Abigail Beall
Features
I
N MARCH, the International Space
Station was set to strike a blow for
gender parity. NASA astronauts Anne
McClain and Christina Koch were scheduled
to perform the station’s first all-women
spacewalk, a mere 20 years and 214 spacewalks
after the first pair of men stepped off the ISS
into the starry darkness.
In the end, the long-anticipated spacewalk
didn’t take place for an entirely trivial reason:
the only spacesuit available for McClain to
wear was a large, and she was a medium.
The history of space travel is full of such
incidents. An industry predominantly
designed for and tested by men, it has always
struggled to understand and accommodate
the different needs of women. In the early
years of space travel, one group of researchers
said women were advised not to operate
any complicated machines while on their
period. When the US’s first female astronaut,
Sally Ride, was going on a seven-day stay
in space, she was offered 100 tampons
along with a make-up bag. Even today,women has consequences beyond mere equal
representation. The fewer women who go into
space, the less data we have on how women’s
bodies respond to this unique, low-gravity
environment, and the more dangerous future
missions are likely to be.Fit for flight
At present, we are aware of only a few ways
in which men and women experience space
differently. A review of available information
in 2014 found that women report more
instances of motion sickness in space, and
soon after returning to Earth are more prone
to a condition called orthostatic intolerance,
which includes symptoms like blood pressure
dropping when someone stands up. Men, in
comparison, are more likely to experience
visual changes, caused by space flight-
associated neuro-ocular syndrome, which
can result in increased intracranial pressure.
They are also more prone to hearing loss than
women. None of these differences, however,space radiation shields designed for women
struggle to fit the female body.
There have recently been signs that things
are getting better. Space agencies are accepting
more women onto their astronaut training
programmes, and are starting to learn from
the experiences of those who have already
visited space. The first all-women spacewalks
are coming.
The role of women in crewed space
exploration goes all the way back to its
beginnings. On 16 June 1963, only two years
after Yuri Gagarin became the first human
to leave Earth’s atmosphere, the Soviet
cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova replicated
his feat with a solo trip on Vostok 6. Her
mission proved that women could join men as
equals in this burgeoning field, their roles not
relegated to that of passengers or, in the words
of one NASA report, “improving crew morale”.
In the 56 years since Gagarin’s first trip
into space, 58 women have made it into orbit.
The number of men to do so in that time? 504
(see “The final frontier”, page 41). This lack of