This is a timeline of women in space and space exploration which describes many of the firsts and achievements of women as astronauts, astronomers, engineers, scientists and other jobs relating to space exploration and space travel. Observational space exploration often takes place through telescopes by astronomers and astrophysicists, and in the 20th century, technology has allowed people to physically explore space either in person, or by robotic proxy. This list encompasses women's achievements from around the world in both direct and supporting roles in space exploration.

• Aglaonike, an ancient Greek astronomer predicted lunar eclipses.^[1]

• Sophia Brahe, the sister of Tycho Brahe, is born. She becomes an astronomer, engineer, alchemist and physician who assisted her brother.^[2]

• Caroline Herschel becomes the first woman to be paid for her scientific work in England. She was an astronomer who discovered nebulae, star clusters and was the first woman to discover a comet.^[3]

• Mary Somerville translates and explains the mathematics of Pierre-Simon Laplace's Mécanique Céleste, (The Mechanism of the Heavens), making the work, about the movement of the planets, accessible to England's mathematicians.^[4]

• Maria Mitchell is the first American professional astronomer when she is hired as Professor of Astronomy at Vassar College.^[5]

• Edward Pickering begins to hire all women to do astronomical calculations at Harvard. His team, helped publish over 10,000 different star classifications.^[6]

• Williamina Fleming discovers the Horsehead Nebula.^[7]

• Annie Jump Cannon publishes a catalog of stars using her own version of Fleming's scheme. Her version classified stars by temperature.^[8]

• Pearl I. Young is the first woman employed in a technical capacity for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), where she worked as a physicist and technical editor.^[9]

• Virginia Tucker is hired as a member of the first Computing Pool for NACA.^[10] The Computer Pools processed test data for engineers.^[11]

• Katherine Johnson is hired at NACA, where she processed data from wind-tunnel tests and later calculated critical data for the Apollo Moon landing and Space Shuttle program.^[12]

• Susan Finley, the longest serving woman in NASA is hired by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Finley will design software for the Deep Space Network and work on many other projects, like JUNO.^[13]

• Marjorie Rhodes Townsend joins NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center where in the next decade she becomes the first woman to be a spacecraft project manager.^[14]

• June 16: Valentina Tereshkova is the first woman in space.^[15]

• June 18: Sally Ride becomes the first United States woman in space.^[15]

• July 25: Svetlana Savitskaya is the first woman to participate in an Extra-Vehicular Activity (EVA).^[15]
• October 11: Kathy Sullivan becomes the first United States woman to participate in an EVA.^[15]

• Women in Aerospace (WIA) was established in order to expand women's opportunities in and their presence in the aerospace community.^[16]

• First school teacher, Christa McAuliffe was killed in the Challenger explosion.^[17]

• Helen Sharman is the first person from Great Britain in space.^[17]

• January 22: Roberta Bondar becomes the first Canadian woman in space.^[18]
• September 12: Mae Jemison is the first African American woman in space.^[19]

• Ellen Ochoa is the first Hispanic woman to go into space.^[17]

• Claudie André-Deshays is the first French woman in space.^[17]

• July 23: Eileen Collins becomes the first woman to command the Space Shuttle.^[15]