When she returned to the US, Jemison worked as a GP and took engineering courses in her spare time (you may notice that Jemison’s concept of ‘spare time’ is not that of others).

Meanwhile, space was still on her mind. “I always assumed I would go into space,” she said. “Not necessarily as an astronaut; I thought because we were on the moon when I was 11 or 12 years old that we would be going to Mars. I’d be going to work on Mars as a scientist.”

Having watched Sally Ride become the first American woman in space just a few years before, Jemison decided it was time to apply for NASA’s astronaut program. In 1987 she was accepted.

At first, she worked at the space centre and on computer software at the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory. By 1992, she was ready for her first mission.

That was STS-47, a cooperative mission between the US and Japan to gather life science and materials data. Once in space, Jemison conducted experiments on motion sickness, weightlessness and bone cells.

What is her legacy?

Having fulfilled her ambition, Jemison resigned from NASA in 1993 and went to work in academia. That year she also became the first real astronaut to appear in Star Trek.

Today, she runs a medical technology company, BioSentient, and supports a children’s science camp she founded in 1994.

She also supports Celebrating Women of Colour in Flight, her scheme highlighting achievements of women in aerospace and aviation.

The Forgotten Women series is part of Stylist’s Visible Women campaign, dedicated to raising the profiles of brilliant women past and present. See more Visible Women stories here.

The remarkable true story of Mae Jemison, the first woman of colour in space