America's 1st female astronaut candidate, Jerrie Cobb, dies

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – America's first female astronaut candidate, Pilot Jerrie Cobb, who has died, is dead.

Cobb died in Florida at age 88 on March 18 following a brief illness. News from her death came Thursday from journalist Miles O'Brien, serving as a family spokesman.

In 1961, Cobb became the first woman to pass astronaut testing. Altogether, 13 women passed the arduous physical testing and 13 known NASA already had its Mercury 7 astronauts, all jet test pilots and all military men.

None of the Mercury 13 ever reached space, despite Cobb's testimony in 1962 before a congressional panel.

"We seek, only, a place in our nation's space without discrimination," she told a special House subcommittee on the selection of astronauts.

Instead of making an astronaut, NASA tapped her as a consultant to the space program. She was dismissed one week after commenting: "I'm the most unconsulted consultant in any government agency."

She wrote in her 1997 autobiography "Jerrie Cobb, Solo Pilot," "My country, my culture, was not ready to allow a woman to fly in space."

Cobb served in the Amazon jungle.

"Ellen Stofan, director of the Smithsonian Institution 's National Air and Space Museum and a NASA scientist, said:" She should have gone to space.

The Soviet Union ended up putting the first woman into space in 1963: Valentina Tereshkova. NASA did not fly a woman in space – Sally Ride – until 1983.

Cobb and other surviving members of the Mercury 13 attended the 1995 shuttle launch of Eileen Collins, NASA's first female space pilot and later its first female space commander.

"Jerrie Cobb served as an inspiration to many of us," said Laura Ohrenberg, head of management in Oklahoma City for the Ninety. -Nines Inc., an international organization of licensed women pilots.

Still hopeful, Cobb emerged in 1998 to make another pitch for space NASA prepared to launch Mercury astronaut John Glenn – the first American to orbit the world – on shuttle Discovery at age 77.

Cobb maintained that the geriatric space study should also include an older woman.

"I would give my life to fly in space, I really would," Cobb told The Associated Press at age 67 in 1998. "It's hard for me to talk about it, but I would, I would then, and I will now. "

"It just did not work out then, and I just hope and pray it will now," she added.

It did not. NASA never flew, male or female.

Geraldyn Cobb was born on March 5, 1931, in Norman, Oklahoma, the second daughter of a military pilot and his wife. She flew her father's open cockpit Waco biplane at age 12 and got her private pilot license four years later.

The Mercury 13th story is told in a recent Netflix documentary and a play based on Cobb's life, "They Promised Her the Moon," is currently running in San Diego.

In her autobiography, Cobb describes how she danced on the wings of her plane in the Amazon moonlight, when learning via radio on July 20, 1969, that Apollo 11's Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had landed on the moon.

She wrote: "Yes, I wish I was on the moon with my fellow pilots, exploring another celestial body. How I would like to see our beautiful planet Earth floating in the blackness of space. And see the stars and galaxies in their true brilliance, without the filter of our atmosphere. But I'm happy flying here in Amazonas, serving my brethren. 'Contenta, Senor, contenta' (I am happy, Lord, happy.) "