In this Oct. 14, 1960 file photo, Jerrie Cobb sits in the cockpit of a twin engine Aero Commander airplane, as advertising and sales promotion manager of the plane's manufacturing company in Oklahoma City. (AP Photo)
America’s first female astronaut candidate who pushed for women in space but never reached its heights has died, reports said.
Pilot Jerrie Cobb died in Florida on March 18 following a brief illness. She was 88.
News of her death came Thursday from journalist Miles O’Brien, serving as a family spokesman.
In 1961, Cobb became the first woman to pass the grueling astronaut testing. Altogether, 13 women passed the arduous physical testing and became known as the Mercury 13. But NASA already had its Mercury 7 astronauts, all jet test pilots and all military men.
“I would give my life to fly in space, I really would. It’s hard for me to talk about it, but I would. I would then, and I will now.”
None of the Mercury 13 ever reached space, despite Cobb’s testimony in 1962 before a Congressional panel.
“We seek, only, a place in our nation’s space future without discrimination,” she told a special House subcommittee on the selection of astronauts.
The Mercury 13′s story is told in a recent Netflix documentary and a play based on Cobb’s life, “They Promised Her the Moon,” is currently running in San Diego.
In this 1960 photo made available by NASA, Jerrie Cobb prepares to operate the Multi-Axis Space Test Inertia Facility (MASTIF) at the Lewis Research Center in Ohio. (NASA via AP)
Geraldyn Cobb was born on March 5, 1931, in Norman, Oklahoma, the second daughter of a military pilot and his wife. She flew her father’s open cockpit Waco biplane at age 12 and got her private pilot’s license four years later.
Instead of making her an astronaut, NASA tapped her as a consultant to talk up the space program. She was dismissed one week after commenting: “I’m the most unconsulted consultant in any government agency.”
She wrote in her 1997 autobiography “Jerrie Cobb, Solo Pilot,” ″My country, my culture, was not ready to allow a woman to fly in space.”
Cobb served for decades as a humanitarian aid pilot in the Amazon jungle.
The Soviet Union ended up putting the first woman into space in 1963: Valentina Tereshkova. NASA didn’t fly a woman in space — Sally Ride — until 1983.
Cobb and other surviving members of the Mercury 13 attended the 1995 shuttle launch of Eileen Collins, NASA’s first female space pilot and later its first female space commander.
Still hopeful, Cobb emerged in 1998 to make another pitch for space as NASA prepared to launch Mercury astronaut John Glenn — the first American to orbit the world — on shuttle Discovery at age 77.
Cobb maintained that the geriatric space study should also include an older woman.
“I would give my life to fly in space, I really would,” Cobb told The Associated Press at age 67 in 1998. “It’s hard for me to talk about it, but I would. I would then, and I will now.”
“It just didn’t work out then, and I just hope and pray it will now,” she added.
It didn’t. NASA never flew another elderly person in space, male or female.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Get a daily look at what’s developing in science and technology throughout the world.