America may have put the first man on the moon, but it was the Soviet space program that made Valentina Tereshkova the first woman in space. Meanwhile, in the United States, NASAs first female astronauts were racing toward milestones of their own. These trail-blazing women were admitted into Group 9, NASAs first mixed-gender class. They had the challenging task of convincing the powers that be that a womans place is in space. But once theyd been admitted into the training program, they discovered that NASA had plenty to learn about how to make space travel possible for all humans. In Astronauts Women on the Final Frontier, Jim
