Trailblazing women in space - a gallery of firsts

Here's a run-through of the amazing women who achieved major "firsts" in space...
Space
2022-08-17T15:05:08Z
Trailblazing women in space, Humans have been flying in space since 1961, with the first women launching off planet Earth in 1963. Since then, women have gone on to set records for spacewalks and long-duration spaceflight on the International Space Station, with NASA aiming to land the first...
First woman in space, The first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova, blazed a trail for the many female spaceflyers who would follow. Tereshkova, a Soviet cosmonaut, was selected from more than 400 applicants to launch on the Vostok 6 mission June 16, 1963. She was 26 at the time. Born in the...
First American woman in space, On June 18, 1983, NASA astronaut Sally Ride became the first U.S. woman in space when she launched on the STS-7 mission of the space shuttle Challenger. She was the third woman in space, after Valentina Tereshkova and Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya, who flew...
First female space station commander, NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson became the first woman to command the International Space Station when she took the helm of the outpost in April 2008 during Expedition 16. It was science that led to Whitson's space career. A native of Mount Ayr, Iowa, Whitson...
First female spacewalker, The first woman to complete a spacewalk, or extravehicular activity (EVA), was Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya. Savitskaya became the second woman to fly in space in August 1982 - 19 years after Valentina Tereshkova's flight - when she served as a research cosmonaut...
First U.S. female spacewalker, NASA astronaut Kathryn D. Sullivan became the first American woman to perform a spacewalk when she floated outside the space shuttle Challenger during mission STS-41-G on Oct. 11, 1984. Sullivan's spacewalk occurred just months after the first-ever spacewalk by a...
First all-female spacewalk, On Oct. 18, 2019, two NASA astronauts made space history with the world's first all-female spacewalk. NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir went outside the International Space Station on an unplanned repair spacewalk to fix a fault battery component. Koch, a...
First Briton in space, British food chemist and private citizen Helen Sharman became the first British person to fly in space when she visited the Mir space station aboard the Soyuz TM-12 in May 1991. During this flight, she also became the first woman to visit the Mir space station. Sharman's...
First African American woman in space, NASA astronaut Mae Jemison flew on space shuttle Endeavour in September 1992, becoming the first African-American woman to travel to space. Born in Decatur, Alabama, Jemison grew up in Chicago and earned degrees in chemical engineering and African and...
First Canadian woman in space, Roberta Bondar became Canada's first female astronaut when she flew on the STS-42 space shuttle mission in 1992.
First Japanese woman in space, The first Japanese woman in space was Chiaki Mukai, representing the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA). Mukai flew on the space shuttle Columbia during mission STS-65 in July 1994. At the time, she set the record for the longest flight to date by a...
First French woman in space, Doctor Claudie Haigneré became the first and only French woman to travel to space when she flew to the Russian space station Mir in 1996. In 2001, she became the first European woman to visit the International Space Station.
First female space shuttle commander, NASA astronaut Eileen Collins was the first woman to command a space shuttle mission, a role that required an astronaut to have at least 1,000 hours of experience piloting jet aircraft. Collins commanded the STS-93 space shuttle mission in July 1999, and went...
First woman to join an ISS crew, The first female member of an International Space Station crew was NASA astronaut Susan Helms, who served as a flight engineer during the Expedition 2 mission from March to August 2001.
First female space tourist, Iranian-American entrepreneur Anousheh Ansari became the first female space tourist when she funded her own way to the International Space Station aboard a Russian Soyuz space capsule in 2006 through the firm Space Adventures.
First South Korean in space, South Korean astronaut Yi So-yeon became her country's first space traveler when she rode to the International Space Station on Russia's Soyuz TMA-12 in April 2008.
First marathon in space, NASA astronaut Sunita Williams became the first person to run a marathon in space during the Expedition 15 mission in 2007. She officially registered for the Boston Marathon and ran 26 miles in 4 miles and 26 minutes