The Six

On the night of June 17, 1983, Anna Fisher, a medical doctor and NASA astronaut one month from giving birth, sat alone inside the space shuttle Challenger's cockpit at Kennedy Space Center, monitoring switches for the next morning's launch. Her colleague Sally Ride, an astrophysicist with a PhD from Stanford, would become the first American woman to fly in space. Anna was one of six women NASA selected in 1978 as mission specialists, nonpilot crew members who operated systems and conducted experiments aboard the Space Shuttle, after decades in which the agency chose only men. The other four were Judy Resnik, an electrical engineer; Kathy Sullivan, a geologist and oceanographer; Rhea Seddon, a surgeon; and Shannon Lucid, a biochemist. George Abbey, the NASA official who assigned astronauts to flights, shaped each woman's fate through decisions that led to "dreams fulfilled, historic firsts, and unimaginable tragedy" (10).

Each of the Six arrived at NASA through a path marked by scientific ambition and discrimination. Rhea Seddon, steered toward science by her father, pursued surgery in Tennessee and dreamed of becoming a doctor on a space station. Shannon Lucid, born in 1943 to American missionaries in Shanghai and interned in a Japanese concentration camp during World War II, grew up in Oklahoma with a passion for rocketry; upon graduation, her chemistry professor told her no one would hire her because she was a woman. Anna Fisher heard Alan Shepard's spaceflight on the radio in 1961 and decided to become an astronaut, pursuing medicine at UCLA as her path to that goal. Kathy Sullivan conducted deep-sea research as an oceanographer before her brother urged her to apply to NASA. Sally Ride, a physics student at Stanford, read a campus headline about NASA recruiting women and immediately applied. Judy Resnik, a math prodigy from Akron, Ohio, pursued a PhD in electrical engineering, took flying lessons, and sought advice from Apollo astronaut Michael Collins to strengthen her candidacy.

Women's exclusion from NASA dated to the agency's founding, when President Eisenhower decreed that only military test pilots could qualify, barring women since the military prohibited them from flying jets. In the early 1960s, pilot Geraldyn "Jerrie" Cobb and 12 other women passed the same physical tests as the Mercury Seven, NASA's original male astronauts, but NASA shut down the effort. At a 1962 congressional hearing, astronaut John Glenn argued that women's exclusion reflected "the way our social order is organized" (70). In 1963, Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space, but no American women flew for nearly two decades.

Change came in the mid-1970s. A 1973 report by NASA employee Ruth Bates Harris exposed the agency's diversity failures. The Space Shuttle's mission specialist role, requiring a science or engineering degree but no piloting experience, opened the door wider than ever. Nichelle Nichols, who played Lieutenant Uhura on Star Trek, traveled the country encouraging women and minorities to apply. Of 8,079 applicants, 208 finalists were invited to Houston, including 21 women.

On January 16, 1978, George called 35 people to offer them positions, including six women and four people of color. The Six reported to Johnson Space Center (JSC) that July for training: classroom instruction, jet flying, survival exercises, and testing of Shuttle systems. They adopted the male astronauts' khaki-and-polo uniform to blend in and navigated a boys' club culture. Judy and Sally distinguished themselves as experts on the Shuttle's robotic arm.

After the Shuttle's first flight in April 1981, George selected Sally for Shuttle mission STS-7. JSC director Chris Kraft initially preferred Anna, but George compared the Six's skills and concluded that Sally's breadth of systems knowledge and robotic arm expertise gave her the edge. Commander Bob Crippen agreed that Sally's reserved temperament suited her to handle the inevitable media scrutiny.

Sally trained for a year while navigating unprecedented media attention. She discovered NASA engineers had packed 100 tampons for her weeklong trip. When a reporter asked if she wept under pressure, she asked why no one posed that question to the men. On June 18, 1983, Challenger launched with over half a million spectators watching. Sally performed a near-flawless mission, deploying satellites and operating the robotic arm. After landing, the relentless public attention took a toll, and she turned to therapy.

The remaining five followed Sally into space over the next two years. Judy flew aboard Discovery on STS-41-D in August 1984 after surviving a launch abort in which the engines ignited and shut down while a hydrogen fire burned outside. Post-flight analysis revealed the first breach of a primary O-ring seal—a rubber ring that prevents hot gases from escaping through joints in the booster casing—in the solid rocket boosters, but the manufacturer, Morton Thiokol, deemed it an "acceptable risk" (262). Kathy became the first American woman to walk in space during STS-41-G in October 1984, refueling spacecraft with hydrazine, a toxic fuel, in the open payload bay. Anna flew STS-51-A in November 1984, deploying two satellites and retrieving two failed ones from orbit. Rhea launched on STS-51-D in April 1985 and used the robotic arm to attempt a satellite repair with improvised tools. Shannon flew STS-51-G in June 1985; she refused to be designated an "honorary man" for a post-flight trip to Saudi Arabia, but intervention from King Fahd through the White House compelled her to go.

By late 1985, all six women had flown. Sally's marriage to fellow astronaut Steve Hawley was deteriorating as she developed a romantic relationship with her childhood friend Tam O'Shaughnessy. Judy was assigned to STS-51-L with commander Dick Scobee, fellow 1978 classmates Ron McNair and Ellison Onizuka, and Christa McAuliffe, the first teacher selected to fly in space. After repeated delays, Challenger launched on January 28, 1986, in freezing temperatures. Seventy-three seconds after liftoff, the right solid rocket booster's O-rings, rubber seals preventing hot gases from escaping through joints in the casing, failed. Hot gases breached the booster, ruptured the external fuel tank, and the vehicle broke apart. All seven crew members were killed, including Judy.

Sally was appointed to the Rogers Commission, the presidential panel investigating the disaster. She passed key data on O-ring flexibility to a fellow commissioner, who shared it with physicist Richard Feynman. At a public hearing, Feynman dunked an O-ring segment in ice water to demonstrate that it became rigid when cold. Allan McDonald of Morton Thiokol disclosed that his engineers recommended against launching below 53 degrees Fahrenheit, but NASA management overruled them. The commission's report recommended sweeping safety reforms.

In the years that followed, Sally retired from NASA and founded Sally Ride Science with Tam, her partner of 27 years, before dying of pancreatic cancer in 2012. Sally's obituary revealed their relationship, making Sally the first known LGBTQ astronaut. Kathy flew two more missions, including deploying the Hubble Space Telescope, and later dived to Challenger Deep, the ocean's deepest point, becoming the only person to have both walked in space and reached the sea floor. Shannon flew four more times, including six months on the Russian space station Mir. Rhea flew two more missions, and Anna, whose second flight was canceled after the disaster, took a leave to raise her family before returning to contribute to the International Space Station.

The Six's legacy endures in the women who followed them. Eileen Collins, inspired by the Six's arrival at her air force base in 1978, became the first woman to pilot and later command the Space Shuttle. NASA astronaut Mae Jemison became the first Black woman in space in 1992. NASA announced the Artemis program to send the first woman and first person of color to the moon. Yet fewer than one-sixth of the more than 600 people who have traveled to space have been women, a reminder that the work the Six began is far from finished.