Read the text below and choose the best answer (A, B, C, or D). 

The adage that “a woman’s place is in the home” no longer applies to the dauntless ladies in space. The first woman in space was a Soviet who orbited the earth with a male companion in 1963 and landed unscathed after a three-day sojourn aboard a spacecraft. Seemingly, it was inevitable that another Soviet woman would repeat her feat. The second woman in space was Svetlana Savitskaya, a parachutist and test pilot, who served as researcher aboard Soviet Soyuz T-7, which had a rendezvous with Salyut 7, the space station in which the longest manned orbital flight was completed. Ms. Savitskaya’s aptitude for space travel was patent in her past experience in aviation. Holder of several women’s records in aviation, she had flown sundry types of aircraft and made over 500 parachute jumps. Her father was a Soviet Air Force Marshal, and her husband a pilot. Without a qualm she boarded the spacecraft with her commander, Lieutenant Colonel Leonid Popov, and another rookie astronaut who was the flight engineer. Soviet authorities announced that they were looking forward to gaining further information about “weaker sex” , so-called in the Soviet newspaper Tass, under the stressful conditions of space travel. Sex, however, is not considered n impediment but rather a benefit in space, for the Soviet have lauded women for their precision and accuracy in carrying out experiments. As planned, the American put their first woman in space in mid-1983. Sally Ride was their choice. Ms. Ride joined the NASA program with five other women and thirty men to train as astronauts in the space shuttle program. She faces an epoch when space travel will no longer be a glamorous adventure but rather a commonplace day’s work. 

The word “rookie” is closest in meaning to