Her first flight was also the first Space Shuttle rendezvous with the Russian Mir space station, paving the way for a series of long-duration missions to Mir by American astronauts. In the years ahead she would fly to space four times, and each of those four flights would be a historic mission. Collins was a veteran Air Force test pilot, with twenty years and thousands of flight hours in experience, and she’d be flying to space as the first female pilot of a spaceship. Thirty years earlier Tereshkova had become the first woman space traveler, but she’d done so as a mere passenger in an automated capsule she wasn’t even an airplane pilot. The contrast between the two women, even discounting the difference in their ages, couldn’t have been greater. Two days before her first spaceflight in 1995, at the traditional prelaunch party, Eileen Collins met Valentina Tereshkova. Title: Through the Glass Ceiling to the Stars: The Story of the First American Woman to Command a Space MissionĪuthor: Col.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |