A Galaxy Of Her Own: Amazing Stories Of Women In Space

By Libby Jackson Century, £16.99

The name Ellie Foraker may not sound familiar, but she played a key role in Nasa’s moon mission as one of the expert seamstresses who designed and made the suits the astronauts wore. A Galaxy Of Her

Own is all about the contributions women have made to advance our knowledge of space, from mathematicians Ada Lovelace and Katherine Johnson to geologist Frances Westall and aerospace engineer Anita Sengupta. Author Libby Jackson, who is an astronaut flight programme manager for the UK space agency, writes: “There are some common themes that run through the stories in this book. The women, regardless of the period they were living in, refused to be limited by any barriers that society tried to place upon them.”