Galaxy Girls Read online

  Valentina’s flight almost ended in disaster. One of the engineers who built the spacecraft made an error in loading the software which controlled the braking system, and it was set to send Valentina far out into space, rather than back to Earth. Fortunately, Valentina spotted the mistake and told mission control, who were able to fix the problem just in time. However, they did not want to admit to their mistake, and for thirty years Valentina kept the secret and took the blame for many of the flight’s problems. Eventually, the engineer who had made the error decided that the world should know the truth.

  Valentina still dreams of space and has said that she would take a one-way trip to Mars. She will forever be known as the first woman in space, who paved the way for the hopes and dreams of so many who have followed in her footsteps.

  “On Earth, men and women are taking the same risks. Why shouldn’t we be taking the same risks in space?”

  Jerrie Cobb

  PILOT

  USA

  BORN 1931 →

  DO WOMEN MAKE BETTER ASTRONAUTS?

  Jerrie Cobb has always been fiercely determined. Incredibly talented, and one of a small handful of female pilots in the 1950s, she has fought throughout her life to prove that women are as able as men, both physically and mentally.

  When NASA was selecting their first astronauts for the Mercury program, scientists and doctors did not know exactly what would happen to the human body in space. NASA approached a doctor, Randy Lovelace, and asked him to find the most perfect physical specimens. He put some pilots through an extraordinary series of physical tests, possibly the most thorough medical ever. After selection, NASA announced their first seven astronauts, known as the Mercury 7—all white, male test pilots.

  Lovelace was interested to know how women might fare under the same tests. Some people thought women would make better astronauts, being generally smaller and lighter (and therefore easier to launch), requiring fewer resources to stay alive and possibly being better at staying calm under pressure.

  In September 1959, by sheer chance, Jerrie and a colleague were walking on the beach as Lovelace emerged from the sea after an early-morning swim, and Lovelace and Jerrie were introduced. Lovelace found out that Jerrie had been a pilot for sixteen years and that she excelled at flying and he knew that he’d found the person he’d been looking for.

  Lovelace asked Jerrie if she would be prepared to undergo the same tests as the Mercury astronauts and she jumped at the chance. She suggested some names of other female pilots, and between them they found a group of nineteen women who would undergo the examinations.

  Jerrie went through the tests first, and passed with flying colors. Many of the women scored better on the tests than the Mercury 7, and the doctors observed that they all complained far less as they went through the physical onslaught of needles, X-rays and electrodes.

  Sadly, though, the program was suddenly stopped. It was not a NASA program and the Navy refused to allow Lovelace further access to their facilities. Jerrie and others lobbied the American courts, but the conclusion was that women weren’t needed. NASA was focusing on the race to the Moon.

  Jerrie was hired by NASA as a consultant but after three years of feeling not very consulted, she left and moved to the Amazon jungle to work as a missionary and solo pilot, delivering food, medicine and other aid to the indigenous people in the rain forest. Forty years later she still harbors a burning desire to go into space—it is the one thing that would have brought her back from the jungle.

  “I would give my life to fly in space, I really would.”

  The Mercury 7 Wives

  USA

  1950s & 1960s

  When NASA revealed which seven astronauts would be the first Americans to venture into the unknown frontiers of space, they gave them the administration’s full support. But their wives—RENE CARPENTER, TRUDY COOPER, ANNIE GLENN, BETTY GRISSOM, JO SCHIRRA, LOUISE SHEPARD and MARGE SLAYTON—were left to fend for themselves, unprepared for what was about to happen. Their tremendous stability and support made a vital contribution to the early space program.

  The astronauts, known collectively as the Mercury 7, became instant celebrities when introduced to the world’s press on April 9, 1959. Journalists immediately began to clamor for information about their wives and families, knocking on the front doors of their homes, thrusting cameras and microphones at the unsuspecting occupants.

  The wives of the Mercury 7 faced great pressure to present a perfect image to the outside world: model housewives for women across America to live up to. All this as their husbands were spending weeks away from home training and risking their lives on brand-new rocket technology, and while they were anxiously worrying about whether the men would make it back to Earth safely.

  These women coped by coming together, and supporting each other through each mission and the unique challenges of their situation. Whenever the press cornered them after a launch, they would always respond that they felt “proud, happy and thrilled.”

  As the astronaut corps has grown through the years since, so has the community of families. Astronaut training takes place all around the world, as the crew learns about the different equipment and experiments which various countries have built and contributed to the International Space Station. Astronauts can be away from their families for long periods of time even when on Earth.

  The flights of the Mercury astronauts only lasted for a few hours, but today missions usually last for many months. When in space, astronauts have lots of ways of communicating with friends and family back on Earth—email and telephone links, regular video conferences—so they can remain closely in touch. Families send small Christmas and birthday presents up to space on cargo ships, as well as other surprises and personal items.

  The wives of the first astronauts were unexpectedly thrust into the limelight but came together to support each other and their partners as they ventured into new frontiers. The community of friends and family is just as strong today, providing support to one another whether in space or on Earth, just as anyone would to their own famiy.

  “We really didn’t realize what his first flight was going to cause—that the whole country would come together and be so excited.”

  ANNIE GLENN

  Eilene Galloway

  LAWYER

  USA

  1906 → 2009

  LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPACE LAW

  Eilene Galloway was passionate in her conviction that space should be used for peaceful purposes, and spent her long career working to unify people to this end. Throughout her life she would work in areas that no one had ever thought about before.

  The early days of the space age were a competition between the United States of America and the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union put the first satellite in space, many were worried it might start a conflict that could turn into war.

  At the time, Eilene was a National Defense Analyst and an expert in missiles. A top government official asked for her help in organizing meetings to discuss the threat of space. Eilene agreed, even though all she knew about space at the time was that “the cow had jumped over the Moon!"

  She and the government assumed that the race to conquer space was a military one, a question of technology and rocket power. However, scientists and engineers at the meetings explained its enormous potential. There were lots of practical applications, such as using satellites to observe the Earth and monitor the weather, as well as communications, navigation and exploration of the Moon and planets. The benefits to humankind could be tremendous. Eilene and her colleagues saw that space shouldn’t be about war, but used for the good of everyone, and in order to keep the peace they would need to devise rules and regulations for space.

  Eilene was asked to produce documents that would first of all create NASA, the American space agency, and then start writing the necessary laws. The United States took their ideas to the United Nations, which then set up a committee to look at peace in space.

  Over the next dec
ade, Eilene and her colleagues worked with many different countries to draft new legislation. Even though only the United States and Soviet Union had actually made it to space, many other countries wanted to ensure that it remained peaceful, in case they wanted to make use of it in the future. Finally, in 1967, the United Nations unanimously passed the Outer Space Treaty, which laid the foundations for all of space law. It includes wording that the use of outer space shall be peaceful and for the benefit of everyone.

  Throughout the rest of her long career Eilene made tremendous contributions to the field of space law, thinking and writing about new issues like the commercialization of space. Her passion meant that the world continues to aim to use space for the good of all humankind.

  “I think it’s very important to not be too serious all of the time.”

  Mary Jackson

  AEROSPACE ENGINEER

  USA

  1921 → 2005

  NASA’S FIRST BLACK FEMALE ENGINEER

  Mary Jackson lived in Virginia at a time when there were unjust racial segregation laws and white people considered black people to be inferior. Mary spent her life fighting this inequality, and helping others to see that they could do so as well.

  She was very bright, and pushed herself through school and university to get straight As and a degree in math and physics. She joined NASA’s Langley Research Center in 1951 as a “computer,” doing mathematical calculations for the engineers. Mary worked in the team that used the supersonic wind tunnel, a machine that blasted models of airplanes and spacecraft with air moving at nearly twice the speed of sound, so that engineers could test their designs at high speeds.

  One day, John Becker, a senior manager, gave her a calculation. She finished the assignment and handed it in, confident that her work was correct. When Becker questioned the answer, she stood firm; she knew she had done the sums correctly. Back and forth they went but Mary was steadfast. Eventually Becker realized that the inputs he had given her were wrong, and her calculations were perfect. He apologized. Word spread that Mary was a force to be reckoned with, unafraid to stand her ground with top management.

  Kaz Czarnecki, Mary’s boss at the wind tunnel, could see that she was extremely talented. At the time, most universities did not accept women in engineering courses, and black female engineers were unheard of, but he suggested that she take the exams. Mary thought this was a brilliant idea. She had to take some evening classes at the local university to qualify, and because she was black she needed a special permit to attend. Undaunted, she applied for the permit, got the qualifications, was promoted, and in 1958 became NASA’s first black female engineer.

  Mary worked in the wind tunnel group for twenty years, producing lots of valuable research and slowly earning promotions. In fact, she stayed there for so long that her hearing was damaged by the loud noise. Eventually she made a tough decision—she left her beloved work in the wind tunnel and took a demotion to become the Federal Women’s Program Manager, working tirelessly to improve the lives and careers of all female employees at Langley. She wanted to make sure that there would be many more women to follow in her groundbreaking footsteps.

  “We have to do something . . . to get [young people] interested in science . . . Sometimes they are not aware of black scientists, and don’t even know of the career opportunities until it is too late.”

  Dee O’Hara

  NURSE

  USA

  BORN 1935 →

  CARING FOR THE ASTRONAUTS, TO KEEP THEM FIT AND WELL IN SPACE

  Dee O’Hara became a nurse because she liked working with people. One day her roomate said, “Let’s join the Air Force and see the world,” and so they both walked into the recruitment office and did just that. Dee found herself seeing much more than just our world, and had a front-row seat to the earliest days of the space race.

  She had been stationed at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida for just a few months when she was summoned to the commander’s office. She was terrified, thinking she must be in trouble, but instead he asked her if she would go to Cape Canaveral as the nurse for the Mercury astronauts, who had just been selected. Dee didn’t know what an astronaut was and had never even heard of NASA, but she took the job.

  There had never been a nurse for astronauts before, so Dee had to learn as she worked. She set up the aeromedical lab, with the preflight medical area, crew sleeping quarters, conference rooms and labs. For each mission, she took care of the preflight medical checks, taking urine and blood samples, and generally looked after the crew’s physical health. The first time Dee met the astronauts she was terrified—they were all big celebrities—but they made her welcome and soon became her friends. Astronauts often had an uneasy relationship with flight doctors as they could ground the crew members, so they would tend to hide health issues from them. Dee made a pact with them that if, medically and ethically, she had to tell the doctors something she would, but otherwise they could trust that nothing they told her would go any further.

  Dee was a constant presence in the astronauts’ lives, looking after their families’ health as well. She worked through all the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and Skylab missions, but never found launch day any easier. She was always apprehensive when the crew was on top of a giant firework, even though she trusted all the machinery to work.

  In 1973 Dee left the world of launch operations and moved to NASA’s Ames Research Center, to run the human research facility. She coordinated experiments that used bed rest to simulate weightlessness, to learn more about how the human body responds to long periods in space.

  To this day she will not reveal any of the secrets the astronauts entrusted to her.

  “Keep studying, keep pursuing what you want to do. Be devoted.”

  Katherine Johnson

  MATHEMATICIAN

  PHYSICIST

  USA

  BORN 1918 →

  CALCULATING THE PATHS OF SPACECRAFT

  Katherine Johnson’s extraordinary intelligence, fierce willpower, and determination never to be defined by gender or race led her to some truly phenomenal achievements.

  She always loved numbers. Her teachers recognized her great promise early on, and she left school for university at fourteen, getting a math degree at just eighteen—an achievement even more amazing at a time when education for most black girls finished before the end of grade school. Her professor said, “I think you’d be a great research mathematician.” She asked, “What’s that?” and he replied, “That’s for you to find out,” and left it at that.

  Katherine became a teacher, got married and raised a family, but she never forgot her professor’s words. One day a friend told her about a government research center that was hiring mathematicians. Katherine applied, and was overjoyed when she was offered her dream job as a research mathematician.

  Engineers would give her reams of data and she loved working through every line, solving equations like a human computer. When assigned to the Flight Research Division, she asked, always inquisitive, if she could attend briefings with the engineers. “Women don’t go to those,” she was told. “Is there a law?” she fired back. “Well, no . . .” came the reply. So she went.

  Soon she was calculating flight paths for the Mercury spacecraft, working out exactly when Alan Shepard, America’s first astronaut in space, had to launch and land. During the flight she was very nervous, and when he came back safely she was relieved that her calculations were correct. Later, John Glenn was the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth, and the trajectory was even more complicated. Although electronic computers had been introduced, Glenn insisted that Katherine check all the numbers. “If she says it’s right, it’s right.” She went on to calculate the trajectories for the Apollo flights, getting humans to the Moon for the very first time.

  Katherine worked at NASA until her retirement in 1986. She always did her best on everything she worked on, so she never had to be asked to do it a second time.

  Over the years she has received nume
rous awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, but some of her most treasured mementos are the letters from young schoolchildren, inspired by her work and the way she broke down race and gender barriers. Her love of numbers and dedication to her work meant that she went from counting everything around her to changing everything around her.

  “If you want to know, you ask the question. There’s no such thing as a dumb question. It’s dumb if you don’t ask it.”

  Margaret Hamilton

  SOFTWARE ENGINEER

  USA

  BORN 1936 →

  DEVELOPING SOFTWARE TO KEEP SPACE MISSIONS ON TRACK

  Margaret Hamilton is one of the first pioneers of software engineering. When she started working with computers the job didn’t even exist—she coined the term “software engineering” to describe her work.

  Margaret loved math and went to university to study the subject, working on computers so huge that some took up whole rooms. While there, she heard about the job of a lifetime. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), working for NASA to develop the software to send people to the Moon, was looking for new recruits. Margaret rushed to call MIT on the phone and within hours had set up interviews with two project managers. Both wanted to hire her, so she told them to flip a coin, secretly hoping her favorite would win. Fortunately he did.