The history of women in space is about to turn 50 years old.

June 16, 2013 was the 50th anniversary of Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova's landmark 1963 flight; she was the first woman to fly to space.

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According to space history and artifacts expert Robert Pearlman, editor of collectSPACE.com, 57 of the 534 people that have flown to space are women in today.

"There have been so many boundaries broken," said Cathy Lewis, curator of the international space programs collection at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. "We've had a woman commander, woman pilot. We've had an all-woman crew that just occurred out of coincidence because it just so happened that they were assembled for their skills. I think the United States is leading the way."

Since the time Valentina Tereshkova has become the first female astronauts in space, more than 40 women have flown to orbit as NASA astronauts. Currently, NASA has 12 active female astronauts.

"NASA took [Tereshkova's flight] to heart, everyone took it to heart, that in order to sustain a space program they were going to have to make it not a program of high performance test pilots and a few selected scientists," Said Lewis, "they were going to have to do it as a more practical, day-to-day career in space."

"It's an uphill battle for women cosmonauts today", Lewis said. "Of the 19 women that have trained as Russian or Soviet space flyers in the last 50 years, three have flown. The last launched to space in 1994. While the United States is working to integrate women into the space program over the generations, the Soviet Union really didn't do that," Lewis added, "they didn't make an effort to integrate women in to the program, and it has really only been in the last year that Russia has changed their recruiting requirements for cosmonauts. The new recruitment requirements are similar to those set forth by NASA and do not have gender-specific criteria."