In the early 1960s, private financing enabled a project that put 13 women through the same rigorous testing as the men who became America’s first astronauts. Janet Christine Dietrich, who died on June 5th, and her twin sister Marion Dietrich were part of that program. Now known as the Mercury 13, the women were all experienced pilots and most had logged more flight time than their male counterparts. All 13 passed the first set of physical tests and 3 underwent isolation tank and psychological evaluations before the project was abruptly canceled. A hearing before a special Subcommittee of the House Committee on Science and Astronautics had no effect. Despite repeated pleas from female pilots to test women for the program, and even though the Soviets sent a woman into space in 1963, it took NASA until 1978 to accept women into their astronaut candidate program.