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Summary
Three women are flying aboard space shuttle Discovery. With another female astronaut awaiting them at the International Space Station, that makes for a record-setting four women in space at the same time.Discovery launched into space at 6:21 am EDT (1021 GMT) in a pre-dawn launch from NASA's Kennedy Space Center here carrying seven astronauts and vital supplies toward the International Space Station. Three of seven astronauts on Discovery are women. They include former high school teacher Dorothy Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger, robotic arm expert Stephanie Wilson and Naoko Yamazaki, the second Japanese woman ever to reach space. Rounding out the female space quartet is chemist-turned-astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson, who is living on the International Space Station after arriving at the orbiting laboratory on Sunday. The four female spaceflyers will meet up on Wednesday to form the largest gathering of women in space in history. Discovery's flight is only the third in NASA history to launch with three female crew members aboard. There are still more men than women in space today, with nine men (four on Discovery, five on the space station) currently in orbit.
