WOMEN have played important roles throughout the history of spaceflight, yet their achievements are often overlooked or forgotten.

So Libby Jackson made it her mission to shine a spotlight on these hidden figures by writing a children’s book A Galaxy of Her Own.

And she didn’t have to travel far to attend the literature festival - Libby lives in Old Town and works at Swindon's UK Space Agency.

She said: “To be part of something like this that celebrates the town is a huge thrill for me because I’m a local.

“I’ve always been fascinated by space but it took me until university to realise that it could be my career.

“Now I’ve spent the last decade working in spaceflight, so don’t be afraid to dream, nothing is impossible. If space is your thing, then there’s a job for you.

"There are so many different roles in this industry so work hard, look out for the opportunities and come and join us.”

Libby enjoyed educating the Arts Centre audience with a fascinating talk about women in the male-dominated space industry.

Though Tim Peake’s spaceflight got a lot of attention, the actual first Brit in space was Helen Sharman back in 1991.

Libby explained that the first woman in space was Soviet parachutist Valentina Tereshkova and how the US joined the space program in 1958 with the launch of the Explorer I satellite that used a new type of fuel which Mary Morgan helped create.

And she discussed Margaret Hamilton, who organised the team that wrote the code for the USA’s first trip to the moon, and she invented the term ‘software engineering’.

Libby said a group of women on the Apollo program at Nasa, known as the ‘Little Old Ladies’, have become so ignored and under-appreciated that, even after exhaustive research, she could only find one of their names.

She told her audience that Sally Ride was the first and only openly-gay astronaut and that the chief operations officer at SpaceX, a private spaceflight company, is a woman Gwynne Shotwell.

Libby added: “It’s been a delight to research and amazing to discover that women have been part of the space race since the very start.'