Henrietta Lacks never travelled to space, but her cells travelled aboard the Soviet Korabl-Sputnik 2 mission before any human entered space

Henrietta Lacks was never an astronaut, but part of her had already travelled into space before humans did. In 1960, HeLa cells were flown aboard the Soviet spacecraft Korabl-Sputnik 2 to study how living cells responded to the space environment.