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Heroes

♀ REBIYA KADEER

♀  IRENE FERNANDEZ

♀ MARY ROBINSON

♀ SALLY RIDE & EILEEN COLLINS

Before these two came along, no male bastion seemed more macho or impenetrable than the ranks of astronauts. Ride (pictured here), a Stanford-trained Ph.D. in astrophysics, made the first inroad on the Right Stuff gang in 1983, when she became the first American woman in space (Russian women were the all-time firsts). It took another dozen years before Collins, an Air Force colonel, climbed the next rung and was named the first woman pilot of a space shuttle. Then last summer came the final breakthrough: Collins became the first woman commander, leading the crew of the space shuttle Columbia on a mission that deployed an X-ray observatory in space.