Editing Space Race (section)

=== First women in space ===
The first woman in space was from the Soviet Union, [[Valentina Tereshkova]]. NASA did not welcome female astronauts into its corps until 1978, when six female [[mission specialist]]s were recruited. This first class included scientist [[Sally Ride]], who became America's first woman in space on [[STS-7]] in June 1983. NASA included women mission specialists in the next four astronaut candidate classes, and admitted female pilots starting in 1990. [[Eileen Collins]] from this class became the first pilot to fly on Space Shuttle flight [[STS-63]] in February 1995, and the first female commander of a spaceflight on [[STS-93]] in July 1999.

The USSR admitted its first female test pilot as a cosmonaut, [[Svetlana Savitskaya]], in 1980. She became the first female to fly since Tereshkova, on [[Salyut 7]] in December 1981.