At least one of the women was already known to Quine. (She was the third woman in space overall after Valentina Tereshkova, above, and Svetlana Savitskaya, who flew on Soyuz T-7 August 19, 1982) First woman Space Shuttle commander Eileen Collins - STS-93. Helen Patricia Sharman, CMG, OBE, HonFRSC (born 30 May 1963) is a chemist who became the first British astronaut (and in particular, the first British cosmonaut) as well as the first woman to visit the Mir space station in May 1991. During the Shenzhou 7 mission in 2008, Zhai Zhigang became the first Chinese citizen to carry out a spacewalk. China's first astronaut, Yang Liwei, who blasted off six years ago, may soon see a woman follow him on the long journey into space. She paved the way for other women to become astronauts, although the first American woman didn't fly to orbit until the 1980s. And so it was that Valentina Tereshkova made her flight in the summer of 1963, a couple of years after the first Soviet and U.S. astronauts took their rides to space. As of 2017, eleven Chinese nationals have traveled in space. In November 2010, his sources close to the Chinese space program confirmed that Wang was one of two female Air Force pilots vying to become the country's first woman in space. The other, Liu, remained unnamed until Quine and Lissov saw the cover. In 2012, Liu Yang became the first Chinese woman to be launched into space when she was launched aboard Shenzhou 9.