NASA Ambassador to Discuss Groundbreaking Female Pilots

Christine Nobbe, a NASA JPL Solar System Ambassador, will visit Truman to present on a group of pilots from the Mercury era who paved the way for the first female astronauts.

The “Mercury 13” were a set of 13 female pilots who passed the same tests as the Mercury 7 team members and aspired to be astronauts. The program is a lost-in-history rogue initiative organized by a NASA consultant, Dr. William Lovelace, to see if women could be astronauts.

Nobbe is the director of gifted education for the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Her talk will conclude with some speculations about the first woman on the Moon, where the Mercury 13 hoped to go 60 years ago. Nobbe will bring a small collection of artifacts connected to the Mercury 13 and famous female astronauts to compliment this Women’s History Month talk.
 
The Mercury 13 presentation will take place at 7 p.m. March 4 at the Del and Norma Robison Planetarium. For more information call 660.785.7827.