Astronauts

Astronauts tells the story of the first women to fly in space, beginning with the Soviet space program. The United States may have put the first man on the moon, but it was the Soviets who sent Valentina Tereshkova up as the first woman in space. NASA took years to catch up, and then its first female astronauts began passing milestones of their own.

The book follows the women of Group 9, NASA's first mixed-gender astronaut class. They faced the difficult task of persuading the people in charge that a woman's place could be in space. Along the way they found that NASA itself had a great deal to learn about making space travel possible for everyone.

The book is written by Jim Ottaviani and told as nonfiction in comics form, with illustrations by Maris Wicks. Its full title is Astronauts: Women on the Final Frontier.