Astronauts Mark Lee and Jan Davis secretly married in January 1991, 9 months before their joint flight to the ISS, and didn’t tell NASA until it was too late to train replacements. They were launched into space together on September 12, 1992 aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour. They deny anything “happened”. They are the only married couple to have ever flown in space together. They divorced in 1999.
NASA denies any sexual activity among humans in space and avoids discussing the subject. Former and current astronauts typically do not like to discuss sex on the space station, and NASA says it does not know if it has ever happened.
According to NASA, astronauts have maintained good conduct while in orbit, despite the introduction of mixed-gender crews forty years ago, in 1983.
NASA does not allow married couples to go to space together. NASA’s official explanation for this regulation is that the presence of a married couple aboard a space mission could potentially become disturbing to the other astronauts.
STS-47 was NASA’s 50th Space Shuttle mission of the program, as well as the second mission of the Space Shuttle Endeavour. The mission mainly involved conducting experiments in life and material sciences inside Spacelab-J, a collaborative laboratory inside the shuttle’s payload bay sponsored by NASA and the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA). This mission carried Mamoru Mohri, the first Japanese astronaut aboard the shuttle, Mae Jemison, the first African-American woman to go to space, and the only married couple to fly together on the shuttle, Mark C. Lee and Jan Davis, contrary to NASA policy.
Pictured within the spacious interior of the Spacelab-J module, astronauts Mark Lee and Jan Davis became the first married couple to fly together on a space mission. Photo Credit: NASA