The Mercury 13By: Martha Ackmann For readers of The Astronaut Wives Club, The Mercury 13 reveals the little known true story of the remarkable women who trained for NASA space flight. In 1961, just as NASA launched its first man into space, a group of women underwent secret testing in the hopes of becoming Americas first female astronauts. They passed the same battery of tests at the legendary Lovelace Foundation as did the Mercury 7 astronauts, but they were