“Good, we are lucky to have you on board, Joan. There are sixteen of you who will be joining us here in Group 9. Eight candidate pilots and eight candidate mission specialists, such as yourself. I am not sure if you got to know Vanessa Ford during your time here at JSC, but she was in the same interview group with you. She also made the cut and has accepted. You two are the only finalists to make it through from that session.”

“No men from our group, huh?” Joan asked, and then could not quite believe she’d let that slip.

But Antonio laughed. “No,” he said. “I am afraid they were not up to snuff.”

Summer 1980

In the months after learning she would be joining the astronaut corps, Joan did three things.

First, she gave notice at Rice.

On her last day, the Physics and Astronomy Department threw her a going-away party. By the punch bowl, Dr. Siskin asked—in a way that struck Joan as remarkably transparent—how she’d managed to pull this off. Joan said, “Luck, I guess,” and then regretted it.

Joan knew that Dr. Siskin, and most men like him, had never taken a good look at her. She was used to it. After all, she was not Barbara. She had never commanded the attention of the entire room with how great she looked in a dress or how well she delivered a comeback. Once, when Joan was a teenager, her mother told her that she and her sister each had their own strengths. She said that Barbara’s were loud and Joan’s were quiet, but both were powerful in their own way. When her mother said this, Joan hugged her.

Joan knew she was easy to overlook. She was average height and a bit stocky. She dressed simply. Her light brown hair was just past her shoulders, but she didn’t wear it feathered like some other women did. Instead, she pulled it back loosely. Sometimes, when Joan saw herself in photographs, she was struck by how beautiful her smile was, her dimples making her face seem friendly and bright. In high school, Adam Hawkins had said so. But she didn’t expect other people to notice.

She also didn’t expect other people to ask what she did in her spare time (she was a classically trained pianist, had run two marathons, was an avid reader and an amateur portraitist, among other things). When people came into her office and saw some of the sketches on her wall, she knew they’d assume she’d bought them somewhere. When someone admired them, she never bothered to tell them she’d drawn them. The praise was never the point. In any case, no one in a long time had asked her about herself enough to know any of this. And Joan found a familiar peace in going unnoticed.