LONDON, July 6 (UPI) -- An American woman was slated to be the first of her gender in space in a long-secret U.S. program. Instead, a Russian woman won that honor.
Forty years ago this summer, cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space. By then, the 13 American woman in the secret NASA program, dubbed the Mercury 13, had already undergone almost three years of strenuous testing and preparation -- the same as their U.S. male counterparts.
"They shut the program down, and the women were stopped at the final stage of their testing," Martha Akman, author of a book about Mercury 13, told BBC World Service's Everywoman programme.
"While the U.S. certainly wanted to launch the first dog into space, the first chimpanzee into space and the first man into space, they saw launching a woman as not that important," Akman said. And NASA "actually called the orbiting of Valentina Tereshkova as nothing more than a stunt."
