Half of NASA's Newest Astronaut Class Are Women

Photo credit: NASA

In January 1978, NASA announced that it had offically hired its very first female astronauts. Now, almost 40 years later, NASA’s latest batch of future astronauts is half women, and in a few years they could be among the first people to set foot on Mars.

Getting accepted into NASA’s astronaut training program is no small feat. NASA only accepts new astronaut trainees every four or five years after putting candidates through a year-and-a-half-long application process, including intensive physical and psychological tests, Fiona MacDonald writes for ScienceAlert. Out of around 6,100 applicants for the 2013 class, NASA only selected eight to join their astronaut training program—four of whom are women.

"We never determine how many people of each gender we're going to take, but these were the most qualified people of the ones that we interviewed," NASA’s Glenn Research Center deputy director Janet Kavandi said in 2013. Read the story in the Smithsonian.