Following up on the first part of my blog series, The Women Who Have Shaped Space Exploration, I focus on three more female trailblazers who have helped revolutionize the space sector.

Valentina Tereshkova

Before she was selected to join the Soviet space program, Valentina Tereshkova worked in a textile factory and was an amateur skydiver. She joined the Air Force’s Cosmonaut Corps and was later commissioned as an officer after her training.

Tereshkova went on to become the first (and youngest) woman in space to have flown with a solo mission on Vostok 6 in June 1963. She orbited the entire Earth 48 times and spent nearly three days in space —  to date she remains the only woman to have completed a solo space mission.

Although an original first group of female cosmonauts was dissolved in 1969, Tereshkova remained with the space agency as a cosmonaut instructor. While the group of female cosmonauts went their separate ways, Tereshkova remained with the space program and graduated from the Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy. Although Tereshkova requalified for spaceflight, she never again went to space and instead retired in 1997 after obtaining the status of major general.


Frances Poppy Northcutt

Frances Poppy Northcutt graduated from the University of Texas with a degree in mathematics, which she believed would help her get a “man’s job” in the real world. She soon was hired as a computeress by TRW Systems, a contracted company with NASA on the Apollo programs. During her first performance evaluation, six months into the job, her supervisor sought to promote her to an engineer on the technical staff, becoming the first woman to do so. At the time, TRW Systems did not have an approval structure in place to authorize the pay raise from Northcutt’s promotion to the technical staff, so she had to earn her pay raise in slow increments.

Northcutt has stated that she felt a lot of pressure on the job because she was the only woman on the team. She told PBS, “I started looking around at these dudes that were working with me and I thought, ‘You know, I’m as smart as they are.” Northcutt later started working at NASA in 1965. Along with her male colleagues, she helped plan the trajectory for Apollo 8’s return to Earth. She was also involved in the Apollo 11 mission and the difficult goal to bring Apollo 13 back home after its perilous time in space.

That’s not the only sector where Northcutt has made her mark for advancing gender equality. After NASA, Northcutt later become a Texas attorney who specializes in women’s rights and has helped pass laws that prohibited hospitals from charingign women for rape kits. She has also helped to dramatically increase the number of women who are appointed on boards and commissions.

 

Jamye Flowers Coplin

Although not as recognized as other women in the history of the space industry, Jamye Flowers Coplin, only 19-years-old when she started working at NASA, was in charge of ensuring that astronauts including Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins were prepared and in a good mindset to make history on the moon.

Joining NASA right after graduating from high school, Coplin became one of Apollo 11’s crew secretaries, which required a full-rounded person who could troubleshoot all issues and was willing to work long, tedious hours. In this first role, she had no idea she’d be working directly with the astronauts who would eventually become the first people to ever walk on the moon.

Referenced in the Smithsonian Institution’s Air & Space magazine, they discuss Coplin’s role and her responsibilities for frequent travel orders, run interference when outsiders requested access and traveled with the astronauts to the Cape for launches. She kept their wives informed and even babysat for their children. When changes were made to the checklist, she had enough technical knowledge to make sure they were securely made. 

In a NASA Johnson Space Center interview, Coplin recalled that, “It was probably years later that I fully recognized how lucky I had been, because it was [my] first job, I had nothing to compare it to. It was just at that time within Nasa that women were given opportunities other than secretarial. I took summer classes, night school classes while I was working there. But the job became so demanding that it was just so difficult to do that part-time. But [it wasn’t until after I left that] Nasa really opened up and gave opportunities to women.”

Without the support and expertise of Coplin, vital necessities and the astronauts’ well-being may have been compromised for revolutionary space missions.

Follow us next month for our third installment of the women who have shaped history in space exploration!