He was also a man who didn't assume as many in the scientific and medical community did, that women were weaker, more fearful, nervous and somehow incompetent intellectually to handle the demands of space flight. 'After he tested John Glenn, Alan Shephard, Wally Schirra, all the Project Mercury astronauts, he asked himself what would happen if we gave these same medical and physical tests to women pilots,' she said 'He was always a man who was pushing the limits of scientific inquiry. Randolph Lovelace, chairman of the Life Sciences Committee for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). She was one of 19 American women pilots who were secretly tested for astronaut training in 1961.

Jerrie Cobb set numerous world flight records, and was named 1959 Pilot of the Year by the National Pilots Association. 'And like everyone else I said, 'Who's Jerrie Cobb? When was she tested? What is this story?' I became very interested and started research then.' 'And way down in about paragraph eight it said, and 'Jerrie Cobb is a little concerned about this because she never got her first chance to go into space,'' she recalled.

Martha Ackmann got interested in the Mercury 13 back in the late 1990s, after reading that one of America's first male astronauts, John Glenn, was planning a second trip into space. Mount Holyoke College professor Martha Ackmann explains why in a book called The Mercury 13: The Untold Story of Thirteen American Women and the Dream of Space Flight. But before Sally Ride came the 'Mercury 13' - a group of American women who passed the rigorous tests needed to become astronauts, but never made it into space. Ask most Americans to name their country's pioneering female astronaut, and they'll probably say Sally Ride, who was the first woman to fly on a space shuttle.

The Mercury 13 by Martha Ackmann