Space Shuttle Discovery launched with first female pilot, Eileen Collins

Considering the time and effort spent by opponents of women’s suffrage to forestall the 19th amendment, it should come as little surprise that for a significant portion of American space history, women were kept away from the space program as well. Space was thought to be the male domain, as much as the Wild West was in the heady days of American expansionism. Nonetheless, the head of NASA’s Special Advisory Committee on Life Science recommended thirteen female candidates for the Mercury 7 program, the country’s first venture into space, all were passed over in favor of the men. A congressional committee found their selection would hurt the space program. The first American woman in space went up in 1982; and the subsequent women astronauts were met with considerably more acceptance.

On this day, February 3rd, in 2006, arguably the final barrier to female equality in the space program came when Eileen Collins piloted the space shuttle Discovery to rendezvous with the Mir space station.

Collins was a sound choice for a pilot. She finished a math and economics double major at Syracuse University the same year as graduating from Air Force Undergraduate Pilot training. She served as a pilot instructor in the Air Force for over a decade, while also teaching mathematics and the Air Force Academy in Colorado. Being chosen for NASA astronaut training was the culmination of her life’s work. As she stated in an 2003 interview with NASA, “I wanted to be part of our nation’s space program. It’s the greatest adventure on this planet–or off the planet, for that matter. I wanted to fly the Space Shuttle.”