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Lesson Plan Image

The Mercury 13

Students will learn about and pay tribute to the women pilots known as the Mercury 13 who took part in space research.

Lesson Plan

Supplies Needed

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  • Paper

Steps

  • Step 1

    In 1959-60 William Randolph Lovelace II, the physician who served as thc chairman of the NASA Special Advisory Committee on Life Sciences, started a privately funded research program which aimed to test and screen women for spaceflight. Have students learn about this program that became known as the Mercury 13. What were the qualifications required to be part of the program? What tests did the women have to undergo? Did any of these women ever go into space? 

  • Step 2

    Ask students to design a visual tribute to these women. They might create a collage by cutting stars out of paper (or using large star stickers) and listing one of the Mercury 13 on each star, or they might illustrate some of the testing they underwent.

  • Step 3

    Have students present their art and talk about what they learned about the program as well as women in aeronautics.

Standards

SS: Time, Continuity, and Change: Analyze the causes and consequences of past events and developments, and place these in the context of the institutions, values and beliefs of the period in which they took place. 

SS: Science, Technology, and Society: Become aware of how science and technologies influence beliefs, knowledge, and people’s daily lives. 

Adaptations

Have students create a timeline of women in space, including Russian engineer Valentina Tereshkova (the first woman who went into space and remains the only woman to have been on a solo space mission), Sally Ride (the first American woman in space), Kathryn Sullivan (the second woman after Svetlana Savitskaya and first American woman to perform a spacewalk), etc. 

Two of the Mercury 13 women, Janet and Marion Dietrich, were identical twins. From March 2015 to March 2016 NASA conducted a Twins Study to help scientists better understand the impacts of spaceflight on the human body. Have students read about this study that had retired astronaut Scott Kelly spend a year aboard the International Space Station while his identical twin, Mark Kelly, (also a retired astronaut) remained on Earth.