Astronauts - BookWyrm

Paperback, 176 pages

Published Feb. 4, 2020 by First Second.

ISBN:: 978-1-250-76003-6

(1 review)

In the graphic novel Astronauts: Women on the Final Frontier, Jim Ottaviani and illustrator Maris Wicks capture the great humor and incredible drive of Mary Cleave, Valentina Tereshkova, and the first women in space.

The U.S. may have put the first man on the moon, but it was the Soviet space program that made Valentina Tereshkova the first woman in space. It took years to catch up, but soon NASA’s first female astronauts were racing past milestones of their own. The trail-blazing women of Group 9, NASA’s first mixed gender class, had the challenging task of convincing the powers that be that a woman’s place is in space, but they discovered that NASA had plenty to learn about how to make space travel possible for everyone.

2 editions

Soh Kam Yung reviewed Astronauts by Jim Ottaviani

On women breaking frontiers in space.

4 stars

A fascinating and humorous story about the women who have the ambition to go to space. The book initially starts with Valentina Tereshkova's journey into space, but then switches over to cover some women in the US who set out to break barriers to become not just astronauts with scientific roles in space, but to also become pilot and commanders of space missions.

Most of the rest of the book covers Mary Cleave, who not only became an astronaut, but went on to become a NASA administrator who ensured that women and other minorities would become represented in the US astronaut corps.