The following is a list of women who have traveled into space, sorted by date of first flight. This list includes Russian
cosmonauts
An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'star', and (), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member aboard a spacecraft. Although generally r ...
, who were the first women in outer space travelers.
Valentina Tereshkova
Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova ( rus, Валентина Владимировна Терешкова, links=no, p=vɐlʲɪnʲˈtʲinə vlɐˈdʲimʲɪrəvnə tʲɪrʲɪʂˈkovə, a=Valentina Tereshkova.ogg; born 6 March 1937) is an engine ...
became the first woman to go to space in 1963, very early in
crewed space exploration, and it would be almost twenty years before another flew (
Svetlana Savitskaya).
Female astronauts went on to become commonplace in the 1980s and beyond. By 2019, roughly 12% of all the space travelers were women. , there were 73 women with completed spaceflights.
History
, of the 621 total space travelers (
FAI), 70 have been women. There have been one each from France, Italy, South Korea, and the United Kingdom; two each from Canada, China, and Japan; five from the Soviet Union/Russia; and 55 from the United States. The time between the first male and first female astronauts varied widely by country. The first astronauts originally from Britain, South Korea, and Iran were women, while there was a two-year gap in Russia from the first man in space on
Vostok1 to the first woman in space on
Vostok6. The time between the first American man and first American woman in space was 22 years between ''
Freedom 7
Mercury-Redstone 3, or ''Freedom 7'', was the first United States human spaceflight, on May 5, 1961, piloted by astronaut Alan Shepard. It was the first crewed flight of Project Mercury. The project had the ultimate objective of putting an astr ...
'' and
STS-7
STS-7 was NASA's seventh Space Shuttle mission, and the second mission for the Space Shuttle ''Challenger''. During the mission, ''Challenger'' deployed several satellites into orbit. The shuttle launched from Kennedy Space Center on June 18, ...
, respectively. For China, this interval was almost eight and a half years between the
Shenzhou 5
Shenzhou 5 (, see § Etymology) was the first human spaceflight mission of the Chinese space program, launched on 15 October 2003. The Shenzhou spacecraft was launched on a Long March 2F launch vehicle. There had been four previous flights ...
and
Shenzhou 9
Shenzhou 9 () was the fourth crewed spacecraft flight of China's Shenzhou program, launched at 18:37:24 CST (10:37:24 UTC), 16 June 2012. Shenzhou 9 was the second spacecraft and first crewed mission and expedition to dock with the Tiangong-1 ...
space missions,
and for Italy, there was approximately twelve years between the
STS-46 and
Expedition 42
Expedition 42 was the 42nd expedition to the International Space Station. It began on 10 November 2014 with the undocking of Soyuz TMA-13M, returning the crew of Expedition 41 to Earth and ended with the undocking of Soyuz TMA-14M on 11 March 201 ...
spaceflights.
A span of 19 years separated the first and second women in space. They were cosmonauts on the Vostok 6 and Soyuz T-7 missions. Though the Soviet Union sent the first two women into space, only five of the women in space have been Russian or Soviet citizens. However, British, French, Italian, dual-citizen Iranian-American and South Korean women have all flown as part of the Soviet and Russian space programs. Similarly, women from Canada, Japan, and America have all flown under the US space program. A span of one year separated the first and second American women in space, as well as the first and second Chinese women in space, taking place on consecutive missions, Shenzhou 9 and Shenzhou 10.
Spacefarers with completed spaceflights
Other astronauts and astronaut candidates
See also
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Chinese women in space
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Mercury 13
The Mercury 13 were thirteen American women who took part in a privately funded program run by William Randolph Lovelace II aiming to test and screen women for spaceflight. The participants—First Lady Astronaut Trainees (or FLATs) as Jerrie C ...
—the ''Women in Space Program'' (WISP)
*
List of space travelers by name
This is a list of space travellers by first flight. The table is listed in chronological order from the date of first flight. The table adheres to the international definition of a space traveller; the Fédération Aéronautique Internationa ...
—all people who have flown in Space
*
List of space travelers by nationality
The criteria for determining who has achieved human spaceflight vary. The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, FAI defines spaceflight as any flight over . In the United States, NASA, professional, US Air Force, military, and Commercial ...
*
List of astronauts by name—people trained to serve as spaceflight crew
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Astronauts, List Of Female
Female
Female (Venus symbol, symbol: ♀) is the sex of an organism that produces the large non-motile ovum, ova (egg cells), the type of gamete (sex cell) that fuses with the Sperm, male gamete during sexual reproduction.
A female has larger gamet ...
Astonauts
Women in space
Feminism-related lists