Nichelle Nichols Space Camp for Teen Girls to Open in 2026, Honoring Late 'Star Trek' Icon's Legacy (Exclusive)

she is the first astronaut known to have been LGBTQ, a fact that she hid until her death, when her obituary identified O'Shaughnessy as her partner of 27 years.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Ride

Per Wikipedia:

After the cancellation of Star Trek, Nichols volunteered her time in a special project with NASA to recruit minority and female personnel for the space agency.[3] She began this work by making an affiliation between NASA and a company which she helped to run, Women in Motion.[47][48][49][50][51][52][53] The program was a success. Among those recruited were Dr. Sally Ride, the first American female astronaut, and United States Air Force Colonel Guion Bluford, the first African-American to go into space, as well as Dr. Judith Resnik and Dr. Ronald McNair, who both flew successful missions during the Space Shuttle program before their deaths in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster on January 28, 1986.

It turns out that the two are connected actually.