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We are looking for new Cristoforetti to look at Mars

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There will be an anniversary in a few days. On June 16, 1963, the 26-year-old Valentina Tereshkova departed in space. For three days she would have orbited the earth 48 times in her space capsule, the Vostok 6. Tereshkova, a textile worker, although she had no experience as a pilot, was accepted into the program thanks to her 126 parachute jumps. However, it was no small skill since at the time, cosmonauts had to parachute themselves from their capsules a few seconds before touching the ground to return to Earth. Among 400 candidates, she was chosen. The second woman in space was also Russian: Svetlana Savitskaya. In 1982, she was the first to fly with a crew, to go aboard a space station (Salyut 7), to do an extravehicular activity (EVA) and to go into space twice (1982 and 1984).

When in 1963 the American magazine Life presented Tereshkova’s enterprise with an article entitled, “She Orbits Over the Sex Barrier” did not hesitate to point out that the United States had an excellent bench of astronauts “more qualified than Valentina”. In fact, the Americans were ready. The aerospace doctor Randy Lovelace, in charge of developing physical and mental tests for the selection of astronauts, had decided to conduct tests similar to those to which he subjected men also on female candidates. And he had done it in secret, unbeknownst to NASA. The women who qualified were known as First Lady Astronaut Trainees, or FLATs, and later as Mercury 13, but they never got a chance to fly because Lovelace’s program was canceled.

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The United States opened the selection of astronauts to women only in 1978 and 1983, Sally Ride she was the first American woman to fly into space as a Shuttle mission specialist. Sally Ride later recounted in an interview: “NASA engineers, in their infinite wisdom, decided that female astronauts would like to wear makeup – so they designed a makeup kit … Imagine the discussions among male engineers about what the kit should have contained … “. In conclusion, the makeup kit stayed on the ground and is now in the US National Air and Space Museum.

The first European to go to space, on a privately funded mission to the Russian Mir space station, was the British astronaut Helen Sharman, in 1991. It followed in 1996 Claudie Haigneré, degree in medicine and doctorate in neuroscience, selected by the French space agency Cnes in 1985. And in 2008, he joined the ESA team, Samantha Cristoforetti which has already collected a series of records, such as the longest period spent in space by a woman on a single mission in 2015, namely 194 days, 18 hours and 2 minutes. And, as announced in recent days, she will be the first European woman in command of the International Space Station and the third woman in the world to fill this role. To date, women have accounted for about 12% of the human presence in space. But a new impulse has now started. NASA has recruited 18 astronauts, half of whom are women, for the Artemis program (Apollo’s twin sister), of which ESA is also a partner. Destination the Moon. And one of the objectives is to bring a female astronaut to our satellite for the first time since 2024. Ambitious mission.

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But there is an anecdote, with respect to female careers at NASA, which deserves to be told. At the end of the 90’s the direction of Science was restructured into three divisions: Solar System, Sun-Earth, Universe. A leader was assigned to each theme. And so it was that the scientist Anne Kinney, became the first woman ever to boast the title of “Director of the Universe”.

After 12 years from the last astronaut campaign, ESA launched a new selection at the end of March that will close on June 18. The ambition is to attract a great diversity of participants and have many more women joining this great human adventure which is exploration. There will be the perspectives of the Artemis program. But we are already looking ahead. And maybe one day the first woman on Mars will be European. Female space exploration does not wait and it is now.

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