Question

Women in space in 400 words

Answer 1

Women of many nationalities have worked in space. The first woman in space, Soviet cosmonautValentina Tereshkova, flew in 1963. Space flight programs were slow to employ women, and only began to include them from the 1980s. Most women in space have been United States citizens, with missions on the Space Shuttle and on the International Space Station. Three countries maintain active space programs that include women: China, Russia, and the United States of America. 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.
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, although the effect of extended space travel on human female reproduction is not known.

Women in space programsEdit



Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, 1969

Although the first woman flew into space in 1963, very early in crewed space exploration, it would not be until almost 20 years later that another flew.
And while a number of American women underwent the astronaut selection process in the early 1960s - and passed - they were not eligible to be astronauts: All astronauts were required to be military test pilots, a career not available to women at the time.[1]
NASA opened the space program to female applicants in 1978, in response to the new anti-discrimination laws of the time. When Sally Ride, the first US astronaut first went to space, the press asked her questions about her reproductive organs and whether she would cry if things went wrong on the job[2].
Women with children also face questions about how they would compare to traditional expectations of motherhood.[3]. Shannon Lucid, one of the first batch of female US astronauts, remembers questions by the press on how her children would handle her being a mother in space[4]. Women are also often expected to be the ones mainly responsible for childrearing, which can impact their career