Mercury 13
1960–61
"Mercury 13" is the popular name given to a group of thirteen women who were tested for Project Mercury astronaut training in 1960 and 1961. They passed the same seventy-five tests that were taken by their famous male counterparts, the Mercury 7 astronauts. The women never had a chance to fly in space, however, because the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the U.S. military were unwilling to accept women into their ranks. By the early twenty-first century, women had been regularly serving as astronauts for over twenty years. Historians have credited the Mercury 13, as well as the doctor and the brigadier general who initiated the women's testing program, as a pioneering event in the U.S. space program.
Mercury 7 Are Heroes
In 1958 the United States established NASA, which integrated U.S. space research agencies and started an astronaut training program. The formation of NASA was a direct response to Sputnik 1, an artificial satellite (an object that orbits in space) that the former Soviet Union had launched
the previous year. This event sent shock waves through American society because at the time the United States and the Soviet Union were engaged in a political standoff known as the Cold War (1945–91).
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