The Women of Mercury 13

The Mercury 13 — a group of highly accomplished female pilots who tried unsuccessfully to be accepted into NASA’s astronaut corps in the early days of the space program — will get honorary doctor of science degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh on May 12. From 1960 to 1962, while the nation followed the exploits of John Glenn, Alan Shepard and other Project Mercury astronauts, these women secretly passed the same grueling tests before President Johnson shut down the experiment.