page_title: Women in space
section_title: United States
hierarchical_section_title: Women in space / Women in space programs / United States
caption_attribution_description: English: Expedition 59 Flight Engineers (from left) Anne McClain, David Saint-Jacques and Christina Koch are gathered inside the U.S. Destiny laboratory.
context_page_description: The first woman in space, cosmonaut, flew in 1963. However space flight programs did nt include women after her until the 1980s. Since then many women from a range of countries have worked in space, though overall women are still significantly less often chosen then men to go to space. The first woman to go to the Moon is planned for 2024, as part of the Artemis program.
  Three countries maintain active space programs that have included women: China, Russia, and the United States. In addition, a number of other countries — Canada, France, India, Iran, Italy, Japan, South Korea, and the United Kingdom — have sent women into orbit or space on Russian or US missions. Most women in space have been United States citizens, with missions on the Space Shuttle and on the International Space Station.
  Women in space face many of the same challenges faced by men: physical difficulties posed by non-Earth conditions and psychological stresses of isolation and separation. Scientific studies on female amphibians and non-human mammals generally show no adverse effect from short space missions.
context_section_description: The United States did not have a woman in space until 1983, when astronaut Sally Ride launched with the seventh Space Shuttle mission. Since then more than 40 American women have entered space. Most served on the various Space Shuttle flights from 1983 to 2011.
  Sally Ride was the third woman overall to go into space. Ride served on the STS-7 from June 18 to 24 in 1983. Judith Resnik was the second American woman in space and the fourth woman overall in space, as a mission specialist on the maiden voyage of Discovery, from August to September 1984, dying less than a year and a half later when the Space Shuttle Challenger was destroyed. 
  The first US woman to go on an EVA was Kathryn ("Kathy") Sullivan on the STS-41-G, which launched on October 11, 1984. Mae Jemison became the first woman of color in space in 1992. The first woman to pilot the Space Shuttle was Eileen Collins who piloted Discovery on STS-63 (in 1995) and Atlantis on STS-84, and became the first female Shuttle commander on STS-93.
  The first woman to be on an ISS expedition crew was Susan Helms on Expedition 2, which lasted from March 2001 until August 2001. United States NASA astronaut Kathleen Rubins became the 60th woman to fly in space when she launched to the International Space Station on July 6, 2016, serving as a flight engineer on Expedition 48 and Expedition 49. She returned in October 2016, having spent 12 hours and 46 minutes on EVA and 115 days, 12 hours and 46 minutes in space as part of these missions. During her stay on ISS she also conducted numerous experiments including some in the area of biology. She was the first person to sequence DNA in space.
  In addition to US citizens, US rockets have launched international astronauts. Roberta Bondar (in 1992) and Julie Payette (in 1999 and 2009) from Canada, Kalpana Chawla of India (1997 and 2003), and Chiaki Mukai (in 1994 and 1998) and Naoko Yamazaki (in 2010) of Japan flew as part of the US space program.
  A number of other high-profile women have contributed to interest in space programs. In the early 2000s, Lori Garver initiated a project to increase the visibility and viability of commercial spaceflight with the "AstroMom" project. She aimed to fill an unused Soyuz seat bound for the International Space Station because "…creating a spacefaring civilization was one of the most important things we could do in our lifetime.”
  On October 18, 2019, the first all female spacewalk was conducted by Jessica Meir and Christina Koch.
  NASA's program Artemis aims to send woman to the moon by 2024.
caption: Expedition 59 Flight Engineers (from left) Anne McClain, David Saint-Jacques and Christina Koch are gathered inside the ISS Destiny laboratory.
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