Women Supporting Early Space Efforts Traveled a Difficult Road

March 21, 2023

*STS-133 mission specialist Nicole Stott uses a still camera at a window on the aft flight deck of Space Shuttle Discovery during activities on Feb. 25, 2011. Photo credit: NASA*

Women at America’s Spaceport – Part 1

By Bob Granath

When NASA’s Kennedy Space Center became operational in the summer of 1962, very few woman held jobs beyond secretarial or housekeeping positions. Today, they serve in leadership posts, engineering jobs and other key roles alongside their male counterparts. In 2015, retired spaceport engineer and NASA astronaut Nicole Stott spoke to employees at the Florida spaceport using the occasion to inspire women working in the space program to take full advantages of opportunities now offered as the agency reaches for deep-space destinations such as the Moon and Mars.

Retired NASA astronaut Nicole Stott spoke to Kennedy Space Center employees on Aug. 26, 2015. Earlier in her career, she was an agency operations engineer at the Florida spaceport. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

Stott was a member of the group of NASA astronauts chosen in 2000. Among three women selected that year, she joined a once exclusive fraternity that had belonged solely to men. She noted that her astronaut class was, indeed, diverse.

“We had an oceanographer, a geophysicist, a test pilot, an aeronautical engineer and we had a submariner,” said Stott who earned a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in 1987 and a master’s in engineering management from the University of Central Florida in 1992. “To me, that’s what you want on a flight crew. You want people who have different experiences, who have differed strengths and who can work together to make the mission a success.”

In the beginning, however, it was a difficult road for women wanting to support America’s efforts to explore space.

Cecelia Bibby

In early 1962, preparations were under way for John Glenn’s flight as the first American to orbit the Earth. He decided to name his Mercury spacecraft “Friendship 7.”

The script art for the name to be painted on Glenn’s Mercury capsule was developed by Cecelia Bibby, an artist employed by NASA contractor Chrysler Aerospace. Glenn wanted her to hand paint the name on the spacecraft as it stood atop an Atlas rocket enclosed in the gantry at Cape Canaveral’s Launch Pad 14.

Bibby’s supervisor initially objected to her painting the name since women rarely, if ever, were allowed up the launch pad towers. Glenn insisted and Bibby was given the opportunity to apply the historic name to the Mercury 6 spacecraft. She later painted the names on Scott Carpenter’s Aurora 7 and Wally Schirra’s Sigma 7.

In the Firing Room at the Kennedy Space Center on July 16, 1969, members of the launch team listen to congratulatory remarks following the successful liftoff of Apollo 11. In the center of the photograph (red arrow) is JoAnn Morgan, the only woman engineer among scores of male counterparts. Photo credit: NASA

JoAnn Morgan

When Apollo 11 lifted off on July 16, 1969 for the first Moon landing mission, there were few women in the Launch Control Center and all except one were secretaries. JoAnn Morgan was the only woman engineer in the Firing Room. She played a key role as a member of the NASA launch team for Information Systems, Communications and Instrumentation Services during many of the agency’s early human spaceflight programs.

“You have to realize that everywhere I went — if I went to a procedure review, if I went to a post-test critique, almost every single part of my daily work — I’d be the only woman in the room,” Morgan said. “I had a sense of loneliness in a way, but on the other side of that coin, I wanted to do the best job I could.”

During early Apollo countdowns, Morgan was not permitted in the Firing Room in spite of being promoted to a senior engineer. But, “Karl Sendler (who developed the launch processing systems for the Apollo Program) went to bat for me.” Sendler asked for permission from Kennedy’s first Director, Kurt Debus, for permission for Morgan to staff a console position during a final countdown for Apollo 11 and he agreed.

“You are our best communicator,” Sendler told her. “You’re going to be on the console for Apollo 11.”

During her long career at Kennedy, Morgan became the first woman senior executive, retiring in 2003 as director of External Relations and Business Development.

Judy Sullivan: ‘That Guy’

During a training exercise for the first lunar landing mission, NASA biomedical engineer Judy Sullivan monitors a console in the Kennedy Space Center's Manned Spacecraft Operations Building. — During a training exercise for the first lunar landing mission, NASA biomedical engineer Judy Sullivan monitors a console in the Kennedy Space Center’s Manned Spacecraft Operations Building. Photo credit: NASA

During a training exercise for the first lunar landing mission, NASA biomedical engineer Judy Sullivan monitored a console in Kennedy’s Manned Spacecraft Operations Building (now the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building). When astronauts were training for Apollo missions, they were fitted with small sensors that would provide crucial data about respiration, body temperature and heartbeats.

As was the case in Projects Mercury and Gemini, the sensors kept flight surgeons informed on the health of the astronauts during the trips to the Moon. Sullivan would monitor the equipment and ensure the information was provided to the proper sources. As such she was the first woman engineer hired by NASA to support spacecraft testing.

As preparations were underway for Apollo 11 in mid-1969, the 26-year-old Sullivan was one of only 100 women, including 16 engineers, serving in top positions at the Florida spaceport. While well accepted by her male counterparts, she was often referenced as “That Guy” as a parody to the popular television show of the time, That Girl.

First Women Astronauts

Six women were among 35 NASA astronauts selected for the Space Shuttle Program in 1978. Posing with an Apollo era Moonwalking suit, from left, are Shannon Lucid, Rhea Seddon, Kathy Sullivan, Judy Resnik, Anna Fisher and Sally Ride. Photo credit: NASA

It took much longer for women to accompany men into space. In the late 1970s, as NASA began preparing for the first Space Shuttle flights, a new breed of astronaut, called “mission specialists,” was being recruited. They did not have to learn to be jet pilots, as the missions focus was on the payloads. In addition to pilots, scientists, engineers and physicians were hired. This diversity included the first women and ethnic minorities.

Six women were selected in the 1978 group with Sally Ride becoming the first American woman in space in June 1983. Now, a new group of astronauts is selected every two to five years, each of which includes women.

*As the first commander of a Space Shuttle mission, Eileen Collins is at the controls of the orbiter Columbia during STS-93 in 1999. Photo credit: NASA*

Women now have served on Space Shuttle and International Space Station crews and performed spacewalks. Eileen Collins became the first woman to command a shuttle mission, STS-93, in July 1999. When Peggy Whitson served a six-month tour of duty aboard the space station, she was commander for Expedition 16 from October 2007 to April 2008.

To date, 77 women have flown in space, 61 of whom, including Stott, are citizens of the United States.

Once Stott had a chance to fly a Space Shuttle mission to the International Space Station, she described the station as a magnificent facility.

“I still get goose bumps thinking about the research and science aspects of what’s going on there,” she said. “We worked together with international crews to make it happen. It’s a beautiful example of how we should cooperate on other things here on Earth.”

Nicole Stott participates in a spacewalk during STS-128 on Sept. 1, 2009. Stott helped retrieve the European Technology Exposure Facility Experiment outside the International Space Station. Photo credit: NASA

Stott was launched to the space station with the crew of STS-128 in August 2009, participating in a spacewalk. She completed her second spaceflight in 2011 on STS-133.

Now retired from NASA, Stott explained that she is pursuing a career as a full-time artist. Stott also wants to inspire young women and men to consider careers in STEM – science, technology, engineering and math.

“Tell young people to pay attention to what inspires them,” she said. “I am very thankful that I had parents who never used the word impossible. They never discouraged me. Encouragement is what makes powerful things happen.”

Sally Ride Science, a nonprofit organization operated by the University of California, San Diego, was co-founded in 2001 by America’s first woman in space. She established the educational program to inspire young people in STEM. Ride echoed Stott’s encouragement to young women and men.

America’s first woman astronaut, Sally Ride, is at work on the flight deck of the Space Shuttle Challenger during SST-7 in June 1983. — *America’s first woman astronaut, Sally Ride, is at work on the flight deck of the Space Shuttle Challenger during STS-7 in June 1983. Photo credit: NASA*

“Everywhere I go I meet girls and boys who want to be astronauts and explore space, or they love the ocean and want to be oceanographers, or they love animals and want to be zoologists, or they love designing things and want to be engineers,” she said. “I want to see those same stars in their eyes in 10 years and know they are on their way.”

EDITORS NOTE: This is the first in a two-part series on the expanding roles of women at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Check back on March 28, 2023 for Part 2 of Women at America’s Spaceport to learn about some of the diverse roles now being performed by women.