Women now make up forty percent of active NASA astronauts
While the first space crews were drawn exclusively from the military, nearly half of the current astronaut corps is female.
The composition of the American astronaut corps has shifted significantly since the 1960s, when security requirements and military recruitment limited the pool to men. Today, fifteen of the thirty-seven active NASA astronauts are women. This demographic shift is even more pronounced in the newest generation of explorers, as the most recent class of astronaut candidates was more than fifty percent female.
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