2013 has been a big year for spacefaring women – real and imaginary. June saw the 50th anniversary of the first orbital flight by a woman, Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova. Now Gravity, the breathtaking story of a female astronaut learning to be resilient and to survive in the harshest possible environment, has set box office records. The film is set almost entirely in space, and while a few may have criticised inaccuracies in its depiction of orbits, trajectories, and so forth, Sandra Bullock’s pivotal performance has won near universal praise. Bullock plays Dr Ryan Stone, a Mission Specialist making her first shuttle flight. At least some of the character’s off-world experiences are close enough to reality for Bullock to have worked on her role with spacefaring chemist, US Air Force Colonel Cady Coleman. They first spoke while Coleman was aboard the International Space Station, and the astronaut and the actress have since appeared side by side in promotional interviews for Gravity.

The critical and commercial success of Gravity will, with any luck, not only herald more films centring on complex, capable female characters, but also shine a light on the stories of real women in space, and inspire curiosity in those who imagine following in their footsteps. Even when they don’t have to battle Kessler Syndrome like Stone, the road to the stars has been an arduous one for women. Nasa did not select any female astronaut candidates until 1978, with Sally Ride becoming the first American woman (and only the third woman ever) to go into space in 1983. But, arguably, it was a lack of imagination rather than a lack of suitable candidates that led Nasa to wait so long.

In the early days of the space race, while the square jawed, heroic all American, all male Mercury 7 dazzled the press in their silver suits, the question of women joining the astronaut corps was brushed aside. When the Director of Nasa’s Marshall Space Flight Center, Wernher Von Braun, was asked if women would ever train and fly in space, he apparently replied: “Male astronauts are all for it – we’re reserving 110lbs of payload for recreational equipment.” (It’s possible this will slightly put you off ex-Nazi and former SS officer Von Braun.)

Nevertheless, some of the best female pilots in the US began to take the same tests as the male astronaut candidates, supervised by the gloriously monikered Dr Randy Lovelace II. Lovelace had a key role in the selection of astronauts and the development of space medicine at Nasa – though his employers were apparently never entirely formally on board with Lovelace’s plans for astronaut equality. Some of the elite female pilots, Lovelace found, performed better in tests than the successful Mercury men had done – particularly in isolation tests, where they easily surpassed their male peers. The 13 women who made it through the initial battery of assessments became known as the Mercury 13. They were briefly a cause célèbre in early 1960s America, but, in spite of numerous public campaigns, were never permitted to go into space. In 2008 Ulrike Kubatta interviewed one of the Mercury 13, Jerri Truhill for her imaginative, poignant documentary She Should Have Gone To The Moon. Watching the film it’s plain to see that Truhill certainly had more than enough of "the right stuff" to make the grade.

Since the 1960s attitudes have shifted drastically. The first Briton in space was a woman, the chemist Dr Helen Sharman (I’m often amazed how few people seem to be aware of her). More recently Dr Geoffrey Landis of Nasa even proposed a future mission where – essentially – diverse buckets of sperm would be frozen and launched aboard an interstellar ark, accompanying an all-female team of astronauts to discover new worlds – and potentially obviate spacemen altogether. (Imagine the delighted looks on the faces of Congress when Nasa asks them to factor that into their budget.) Oh, and this year the Nasa astronaut cohort has equal numbers of men and women.

Though we live at a time when the numbers of women who have gone into space finally exceeds the number of dogs that have gone into space, we still have a way to go to see our possibilities stretch "to infinity and beyond". Like fellow astronaut and social media sensation Commander Chris Hadfield (with whom she plays in a band), Coleman loves music in space, both for pleasure and to build bridges back to Earth for people who might not otherwise even be aware that the space station exists. She has actually carried (and played) Jethro Tull’s flute and The Chieftains’ penny whistle into space with her, and also recognises what Sandra Bullock’s fictional astronaut carries with heris, potentially, “enormous” for women.

Gravity acts to balance the widespread, creeping "pinkification" of products and expectations for young women and girls. In offering up a tough capable heroine it’s a welcome counterpoint to Mars Explorer Barbie – adding “her signature pink splash to the ‘red planet’” (good luck up there without any gloves, Barbie!). This matters because not everyone grows up in an environment rich in books and diverse role models. Pop culture remains the oracle that many people, particularly young people, consult to see what is and isn’t possible for the likes of them. Coleman speaks plainly about sending the message however she can. While aboard the ISS she says, she grew her hair. "I let it grow, because I wanted it to be… I wanted it to scream zero g – there is a woman in space – for these girls,” she said.

Whenever women have left the weight of Earthy expectations about their gender behind them they’ve never really looked back. In 1963 when Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova became the first woman in space she orbited the Earth 48 times, remaining up there for two days, 23 hours and 12 minutes – longer than all Nasa’s Mercury 7 men up to that point had managed put together. As Dr Mae Jemison, dancer, physician, Peace Corps Officer and first African American woman to go into space succinctly put it, “never let yourself be limited by other people’s limited imagination”.

Helen Keen is on Twitter as @helen_keen

Series 1 & 2 of her BBC Radio 4 show It Is Rocket Science are available from iTunes and AudioGo and a third series will be broadcast in 2014