One giant step for womankind

TWENTY-FIVE years ago today, riding on a tower of smoke and flame out of Florida's Kennedy Space Centre, Sally Ride, a physicist and former tennis champion, became the first American woman to fly into space, part of a five-person crew on the Space Shuttle Challenger.

Ride, 32 at the time, spent six days on the spacecraft as a flight engineer, monitoring controls and operating a 50ft retractable arm in retrieving a satellite instrument package. However, the first giant step for womankind had been taken 20 years previously, when the Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova rocketed into space 45 years ago this month, to pass almost three days in her spacecraft, Vostok VI. Her leaving the Earth's atmosphere didn't necessarily break the glass ceiling for women in space exploration, though: there would be a considerable time lapse before another woman was allowed to venture into space – another Russian, Svetlana Savitskaya, who became the first woman to "walk" in space, just seven months before Sally Ride's space flight.

To date, something approaching 480 people have flown into space since Yuri Gagarin's pioneering single-orbit flip in 1961. Just 50 have been women (four of whom died in the process). Initially, the gender imbalance was inevitable, as space flyers were drawn from air combat personnel, some of them war veterans.

An exception was Tereshkova, a former textile worker who embarked on further education by correspondence course and took up skydiving. It was her only space flight (questions were later raised over her emotional state during it, while she responded that the orientation system of her Vostok capsule had been badly set up), but became fted as a "female Gagarin" by the Politburo. She was also cajoled into an ultimately unsuccessful marriage to fellow cosmonaut Andrian Nikolayev (both came from similar, ideologically sound peasant stock).

But in the land of the free, women were also finding it hard to slip the surly bonds of Earth. As far back as the early 1960s, a number of young women, unofficially known as the "Mercury 13", were privately put through the same gruelling tests to which the official Nasa "Mercury Seven" had been subjected, out-performing their male counterparts in some areas. Nevertheless they appeared not to have the right stuff, so far as the establishment was concerned, and it was the rocket jocks who went on to make the headlines.

One of the first messages Sally Ride received on returning to Earth was a congratulatory telegram from Tereshkova. She may have made history but, like Tereshkova, she would make only the one voyage into space. Little more than two years after her flight, in January 1986, the Challenger space shuttle broke up shortly after lift-off, killing its crew of seven, including two women, Christa McAuliffe and Dr Judith Resnik, its corkscrew smoke trail becoming a grim icon of the risks of riding rockets into space. Ride would become the only person to work on the investigations into both the Challenger and the later Columbia Shuttle disasters. Resigning from Nasa in 1987 and studiously avoiding any limelight associated with her pioneering woman-in-space role, she now works zealously to encourage science education among girls. Twenty-five years on from Ride's flight, and 45 from Tereshkova's, NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg became the 50th woman to fly in space when she took off on board the Space Shuttle Discovery last month, part of the team who manoeuvred the Japanese Kibo laboratory module on to the International Space Station. The mission returned to Kennedy Space Centre on Saturday.

Asked about women in space just before her flight, Nyberg, a 38-year-old mechanical engineer, remarked: "I'm really looking forward to the time when we're not counting any more."

June 1963

Valentina Tereshkova, the world's first spacewoman, spent almost three days in a Vostok spacecraft and did 48 orbits – more than the aggregate flight time of all three previous American astronauts. She was selected for the mission by Premier Nikita Khrushchev, as embodying all the qualities of an ideal "New Soviet Woman".

August 1982

Another Russian, Svetlana Savitskaya, became the second woman in space and the first woman to "walk" in space. She was later scheduled to command an all-female crew in Salyut 7 to mark International Women's Day, but this fell through owing to technical problems. In 1989 Savitskaya became a member of the Russian parliament.

June 1983

Sally Ride, a physicist and former tennis champion, became the first American woman in space. She is now industrious in promoting science education for girls and developed the Nasa-sponsored EarthKAM project, which enables school students to investigate natural phenomena using digital cameras onboard space shuttles.

May 1991

Sheffield-born Helen Sharman, 27, became the first Briton in space, as well as the first non-American and non-Soviet woman astronaut. She flew to the Mir space station on board a Soviet Soyuz space capsule.

September 1992

Mae Jemison, a former Peace Corps medical officer with a background in medical research and engineering, became the first black woman in space. Alabama-born Jemison flew on board an eight-day US-Japanese joint mission, on which she conducted a bone-cell research experiment.

February 1995

Eileen M Collins became the first woman to pilot an American space shuttle and, four years later, was the first woman commander of a Nasa shuttle mission.

In 2005 she commanded the Discovery, NASA's first shuttle mission since the Columbia tragedy of 2003.

September 1996

US astronaut Shannon Lucid returned from a 188-day mission on the Mir space station, her fifth space flight, becoming the female world-record holder for time spent in space. Having bridled at initial suggestions from her (male) Russian companions that she could clean the station, she later wrote warmly of the international fellowship of her stint in orbit.

September 2006

Telecommunications entrepreneur Anousheh Ansari became the first female space tourist, as well as the first Iranian to go into orbit, paying around $20 million to fly to the international Space Station on a Russian spacecraft. The 40-year-old Iranian-American, whose family funded the $10 million Ansari X Prize for a reusable manned spacecraft, spent an eight-day sojourn on the space station.

June 2007

Sunita Williams, a US naval officer and astronaut, set a new record for the longest unbroken space flight by a woman, having passed 195 days on board the International Space Station. She also "ran" the Boston marathon, on a treadmill in the space station, while the event took place on Earth. She is currently deputy chief of the Astronaut Office at Nasa's Johnson Space Centre

October 2007

The 47-year-old biochemist Peggy Whitson became the first woman to command the International Space Station. She returned to Earth in April this year, having spent 192 days on the space station. She has also chalked up 39 hours and 46 minutes of space walking, more than any other woman.

June 2008

NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg became the 50th woman to fly in space, part of the team on the space shuttle Discovery who manoeuvred the 15-tonne Japanese Kibo laboratory module on to the International Space Station. The mission returned safely to Kennedy Space Centre on Saturday.

Four who paid the ultimate price

Christa McAuliffe, the first teacher and "ordinary citizen" to go into space, above, and Dr Judith Resnik were among the seven US crew killed when the Challenger space shuttle disintegrated shortly after take-off in January 1986. In February 2003, Laurel Clark, an American, and Indian-born Kalpana Chawla perished along with five others when their shuttle, Columbia, broke up on re-entry.