13 Women Led the Way for US in Space

April 09, 2013

Jerrie Cobb, one of the Mercury 13, at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida in 1998

I’m Steve Ember.

And I’m Barbara Klein with EXPLORATIONS in VOA Special English. Today we tell about a program in the nineteen sixties to train women as astronauts. Today they are known as the Mercury 13. They never reached their goal of spaceflight. But they led the way for other American women to travel into space.

In nineteen fifty-nine the United States was involved in a space race with the former Soviet Union. The Soviets had surprised the world by launching the first satellite. Sputnik One was launched into orbit on October fourth, nineteen fifty-seven. Suddenly, the United States appeared to be behind in an important area of technology.

As a result, President Dwight Eisenhower formed the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in nineteen fifty-eight.

By April seventh, nineteen fifty-nine NASA introduced the first American astronauts. They were Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Virgil Grissom, Walter Shirra, Alan Shepard and Donald Slayton. They were known as the Mercury Seven.

In the fall of that year, William Randolph Lovelace was attending a meeting of the Air Force Association in Miami, Florida. Doctor Lovelace was deeply involved in the effort to put Americans into space. He served on NASA's Special Committee on Life Sciences. Astronaut candidates had been put through tests at his medical center in Albuquerque, New Mexico.