2023-06-16 05:58:05
► Valentina Tereshkova, the pioneer
On June 16, 1963, sixty years ago to the day, a Russian cosmonaut, Valentina Tereshkova, then aged 26, became the first woman to go into space. The young pilot and parachutist completed 48 orbits around the Earth in 70 hours during the Vostok-6 mission.
She remains today the youngest woman to have conquered space and the only woman to have carried out a space mission alone. Since then, the growth in the size of the vessels has made it possible to accommodate a crew of two to three people.
It took nineteen years for another woman, Soviet Svetlana Savitskaya, to return to space, joining the Salyut-7 space station for four months in 1982. And it was not until 1983 that a woman of another nationality will take the leap into the void.
► Sally Ride, the American
At the beginning of the space conquest, in the 1960s, several American women passed the astronaut selection process. However, the astronauts then had to be military test pilots. This career not being open to them, women saw themselves de facto disqualified.
The American Sally Ride is therefore the first American woman to board a rocket leaving for space in 1983. An astrophysicist by training, she worked at Stanford University, then at the University of California in San Diego. The young astronaut made her first flight from June 18 to 24, 1983 aboard the space shuttle Challenger.
It was the beginning of an era of great female space firsts, most of which we owe to NASA: the first African-American astronaut, Mae Jeminson, in 1992; the first space shuttle commander, Eileen Collins, in 1999; the first commander of the International Space Station (ISS), Peggy Whitson, in 2007.
► Claudie André-Deshays, the first (and last) French
On August 17, 1996, Claudie André-Deshays (now Haigneré) took off for a 16-day stay aboard the Russian orbital station Mir. As part of the Franco-Russian Cassiopée mission, she carried out numerous medico-physiological, technical and biological experiments.
The young scientist is the only Frenchwoman to have found herself in orbit out of the ten astronauts who have already represented France in space. She is also the first European woman to orbit the Earth. In January 2001, she became the first French astronaut to join the International Space Station.
► Rayyanah Barnawi, latest, first Saudi
The latest and a first. Astronaut Rayyanah Barnawi blasted off on May 21, 2023 in the SpaceX private commercial mission Crew Dragon Freedom capsule to dock with the ISS for ten days. At his side, another Saudi, Ali Alqarni, and two Americans, Peggy Whitson and John Shoffner.
The biomedical researcher served as a mission specialist, a position assigned to medical tests or technical questions. The Saudi astronaut therefore participated in several scheduled experiments, particularly on human health and physiology.
The conquest of space by women continues. As part of the Artemis program, which aims to return to the moon (and beyond), NASA has announced that among the seventeen astronauts selected for the missions, nine are women.
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