Fly Me to the Moon? The Story of the First Lady Astronaut Trainees

In 1961, Dr. William Randolph Lovelace II invited the nation’s best female airplane pilots to his medical facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he subjected them to physical and psychological exams designed to determine if they had “the right stuff” to fly in space. Now commonly known as the Mercury 13, that class of First Lady Astronaut Trainees (FLATs) included twins, a senator's wife, a few mothers, and a woman who would realize their shared dream of becoming an astronaut 60 years later.