Geneva, April 05: SPACE is about to have a female population explosion, with four women set to be in orbit at the same time.
This week NASA will attempt to launch three women to the International Space Station, where they will join another woman who is already circling earth in a Russian capsule.
It will be the most women in space at the one time.
The astronauts are a former schoolteacher, a chemist who once worked as an electrician and two aerospace engineers.
Americans Dorothy Metcalf- Lindenburger and Stephanie Wilson and Japanese astronaut Naoko Yamazaki will launch with Discovery’s seven- strong crew on Monday.
Wilson, 43, said, “ I think that we have made a great start and have paved the way with women now being able to perform the same duties as men in spaceflight.” Wilson became the second black woman in space in 2006.
The crew will spend 13 days in space, hauling up big spare parts, experiments and other supplies to the nearly completed space station.
Yamazaki will become the second Japanese woman to fly in space.
The women will join American Tracy Caldwell Dyson, who was launched aboard a Soyuz rocket from Kazakhstan on Friday with two Russian male astronauts.
Dyson will arrive on Sunday and stay at the space station for six months.
The 40- year- old has a doctorate in chemistry and grew up in Southern. She was inspired by former schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe, who was killed along with six others aboard Challenger in 1986.
Metcalf- Lindenburger was a young earth- science and astronomy teacher when she stumbled onto a wanted ad for astronaut- educator in 2003.
The head of NASA’s space operations was unaware of the imminent record until it was pointed out to him last week.
“ Maybe that’s a credit to the system, right? That I don’t think of it as male or female,” space operations chief Bill Gerstenmaier said. “ I just think of it as a talented group of people going to do their job in space,” he added.
–Agencies