KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — Sally Ride was the first American woman in space when she rode on Space Shuttle Challenger from KSC’s Launch Complex 39-A on June 18, 1983. She broke barriers, but she wasn’t alone.
She was among six women named in 1978 as part of NASA Astronaut Group 8, all mission specialists. Ride was the first, but all six women from that class made it to space including Anna Fisher, who became the first mom in space when she launched on her lone mission aboard Space Shuttle Discovery in 1984.
“I was assigned to my flight two weeks before my daughter was born,” Fisher said during a “Women in Space” panel Friday at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. “So it was quite an intense year, jumping in and being a new mom and being a first-time flyer. I will never forget those memories and it was a successful mission.”
Fisher, now 73, flew on STS 51-A, the 14th shuttle mission overall, launching Nov. 8, 1984, to retrieve two satellites that had not made it to the correct orbit and returning nearly eight days later. The first of her two daughters, Kristin, who is now grown up and works as the space and defense correspondent for CNN, was just over a year old when Anna flew to space.
“My daughter tells me I owe it all to her,” Fisher said about becoming the first mother in space. “That’s not the way I exactly planned it. … It was a very exciting year doing the two things I love, and it’s been very fun to share that with her.”
Fisher said she had wanted to become an astronaut since she was 12 years old listening on a transistor radio in her PE teacher’s class in 1961 as Alan Shepard became the first American in space launching on Freedom 7.
“That was when I decided that’s what I want to do someday. I want to combine my love of math and science with space exploration,” she said, but noted the reality at the time was that all the astronauts back then were military test pilots, and men. “Women weren’t even allowed to join the military and fly high-performance jets so that they would be eligible to go to test pilot school. So it didn’t seem like a very likely ambition, but I knew that that’s what I wanted to do if ever given the opportunity.”
She pursued a a degree in chemistry and then pursued a medical degree at UCLA.
“I went to medical school thinking in the back of my mind that even if i didn’t get to become an astronaut maybe some day I’d get to be a doctor on a space station,” she said.
While still in school, she found out NASA was looking for a few good men, or women, to become the next set of astronaut candidates, and that it was open not to just pilots, but mission specialists.
“I didn’t lose any time getting my application in as quickly as possible,” she said.
When asked by one member of the crowd about what it’s like to be in a field such as science that can at times feel like a “boy’s club,” Fisher said when she was earning her degrees in the early 1970s that she was sometimes the only woman in her classes. And at the time, that meant just staying focused on her goals, trying to just fit in among the male-centric workforce, even after being selected by NASA.
“I remember Sally and I went shopping looking for khaki pants and shirts so that we could just blend in and look like one of the guys,” she said. “We were working hard to try and not draw attention to the fact that we were women. We just wanted to be astronauts and be the best that we could be.”
But she’s pleased to see where women have come in the 40 years since with more than 75 women now having been to space. While Ride was the first American in space, two Soviet women flew first with Valentina Tereshkova paving the way in 1963. Fisher was the sixth woman, and as her career continued past her lone shuttle flight, she took note of the changes.
“Fast forward many years later,” she said talking about how she overheard two new female astronauts at the end of a dinner party. “They were talking about what they were going to do, and they were, ‘Let’s go get mani-pedis.’ And I thought to myself, if I ever said that to Sally I think she would have hit me.”
But she said she’s happy that the environment had changed to allow women to “express their femininity in whatever way they wanted.”
She said in some ways that it was almost in their own heads that they were having to “deal with the guys.”
“Once we were at NASA, I think the world was ready to accept us,” she said.
Fisher was joined on the panel by fellow former NASA astronaut Kathy Thornton, NASA Johnson Space Center Director Vanessa Wyche, Boeing Exploration Systems vice president and chief engineer Noelle Zietsman, Nancy Cuty with NASA Kennedy Space Center Planning and emcee Lisa Malone, former director of public affairs for NASA Kennedy Space Center.
They shared their favorite moments in their careers and where they see women in the future while speaking in front of a crowd of more than 200 as part of a monthlong series of events at the visitor complex celebrating Sally Ride’s first trip to space.
Zietsman, who has worked for Boeing on the Space Launch System rocket that successfully launched Artemis I on its mission to the moon last year is excited about NASA’s next plans and their roles for women. The first woman to deep space will fly when Artemis II launches next year for a trip around the moon while the Artemis III mission that could come as early as 2025 aims to send the first woman to the surface of the moon. But the key to a continued diverse approach to space was sitting in the audience, she said.
“We have really been trying to focus on the pipeline. The pipeline is really important, and you guys are the pipeline,” she said. “We value that thought differences that we have from all diversity of gender, background, etc, because that really gives us more creative thought. … When you get those diverse connections together, the thoughts and the processes that we get to be able to create is just unbelievable.”
Wyche is one of the few female NASA space center directors, but thinks the day is sooner than later that a woman will be leading NASA.
“I think it’s time, and I think our administrator [Bill Nelson], if you talk to him he thinks that as well. It’s a matter of when,” she said noting that Nelson and Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy work very much hand-in-hand. “They are very complementary of one another, their skill sets, but I do look forward to one day we will be able to break that particular barrier.”
For Fisher, she thinks her astronaut group, and not just the women, helped pave the way for what NASA is today. She calls the group the TFNG’s, as in “thirty-five new guys,” which also included the first Black, Asian and Latino astronauts.
“NASA made a commitment to selecting a very diverse group. It started with that level of visibility, and then kind of started to spread throughout NASA,” she said. “It was definitely the beginning of bringing everyone into the space program.”
Now she says NASA has become one of the best places to work in the world.
“They actually do not care anything about what you look like, what your ethnicity is, your sexual orientation, whatever,” she said. “They just do not care, as long as you are excellent and love what you’re doing and passionate about space.”
