The Mercury 13 were a group of 13 American women who were selected to privately undergo the same battery of tests as the Mercury 7 astronauts selected by NASA on April 9, 1959, for Project Mercury. Like the men, the women (who had hopes to become the first female astronauts) were tested at the famous Lovelace Foundation, but they were not part of NASA’s astronaut program and sadly never had the chance to fly to space.