Who Was The First LGBTQ+ Astronaut?
Who Was The First LGBTQ Astronaut?
On June 18th, 1983, Sally Ride made history by becoming America's first woman in space. It was only after her death that her sexual orientation was revealed to the public.
Ride, a Ph.D. in astrophysics, chose not to come out during her lifetime due to institutional reasons. She went to space at the age of 32 and during her time at NASA, she accomplished many firsts.
- Ride was the first woman to operate the robot arm in space and the first to use it to retrieve a satellite.
- On her second flight, the Challenger, she spent over 343 hours in space.
- This flight was also historic as it included the first flight with more than one woman, with Kathryn D. Sullivan joining Ride as a crew member.
Ride made a deliberate decision not to publicly reveal her sexual orientation due to the potential negative impact it could have on her mission. As the first American woman in space, she already faced intrusive and irrelevant questions such as:
• How do you manage menstruation in space?
• Do you wear a bra in space?
• Will your reproductive capabilities be affected after the mission?
Who was the first openly gay astronaut?
In December 2018, Ann McClain became the first astronaut to travel to space while openly identifying as gay.
The fact that there were no openly gay astronauts until recent years highlights the prevailing culture at NASA and in our society. Although there is now greater acceptance for the LGBTQ+ community, there is still a long way to go before it becomes universally accepted.
In January 2018, NASA astronaut Jeanette Epps was replaced by Serena Aunon-Chancellor as the prime crew of Expedition 56/57, causing Ann McClain to move up and take Aunon-Chancellor's place on the Expedition 56/57 backup crew. McClain was then assigned to the prime crew of Expedition 58/59 with Oleg Kononenko and David Saint-Jacques. They launched aboard Soyuz MS-11 on December 3, 2018, after the launch was rescheduled from December 20, 2018, due to the failure of Soyuz MS-10. On March 22, 2019, McClain and Nick Hague performed their first spacewalk to install adapter plates and remove debris from the Unity Module, among other tasks. McClain was originally scheduled to perform a second spacewalk on March 29 with Christina Koch, which would have been the first all-female spacewalk, but spacesuit sizing issues resulted in the EVA being reassigned to Hague and Koch. McClain conducted a second spacewalk with Saint-Jacques on April 8. McClain, Saint-Jacques, and Kononenko returned to Earth on June 24, 2019, aboard Soyuz MS-11.
