 Seven surviving FLATs attending the STS-63 launch (1995).(from left): Gene Nora Jessen, Wally Funk, Jerrie Cobb, Jerri Sloan Truhill, Sarah Ratley, Myrtle Cagle, and Bernice Steadman. | |
| Program overview | |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Organization | Privately funded program |
| Purpose | Medical and physiological astronaut testing |
| Status | Discontinued |
| Program history | |
| Duration | 1959–1962 |
The Mercury 13 were thirteen American women who took part in a privately funded research program run by NASA physician William Randolph Lovelace II in 1959-1960, which aimed to test and screen women for spaceflight. The first participant, pilot Geraldyn "Jerrie" Cobb helped Lovelace identify and recruit the others. The participants successfully underwent the same physiological screening tests as had the astronauts selected by NASA for Project Mercury. While Lovelace called the project Woman in Space Program,[1] the thirteen women decades later became known as the "Mercury 13"— a term coined in 1995 as a comparison to the Mercury Seven astronauts. The Mercury 13 women were not allowed in NASA's official astronaut program, and at the time, never trained as a group, nor flew in space.
In the 1960s, some of these women were among those who lobbied the White House and US Congress to have women included in the astronaut program. They testified before a congressional committee in 1962. In 1963, Clare Boothe Luce wrote an article for LIFE magazine publicizing the women and criticizing NASA for its failure to include women as astronauts.[2]
One of the thirteen, Wally Funk, was launched into space in a suborbital flight aboard Blue Origin's July 20, 2021 New Shepard 4 mission Flight 16, making her the (then) oldest person to go into space at age 82. The story of these women has been retold in books, exhibits, and movies, including the 2018 Netflix-produced documentary Mercury 13.