The Associated Press

DAYTON, Ohio - An Apollo astronaut, the nation's first licensed female pilot, a test pilot and an aerobatic champion are to be enshrined in the National Aviation Hall of Fame next year.

The honorees will include retired astronaut William Anders, who circled the moon in 1968; the late Harriet Quimby, the first American woman to receive a pilot's license; the late test pilot Jack Ridley, who was flight test engineer for Chuck Yeager's record-setting supersonic flight in 1947, and Patty Wagstaff, who in 1991 became the first woman to win the U.S. National Aerobatic Championships.

Anders, of Sunset Harbor, Wash., became one of the first three astronauts to circle the moon on the Apollo 8 mission. He has been an executive with major aerospace companies, is an air racer and flies restored military aircraft in air shows.

Quimby was a journalist and photographer who received her pilot's license from the Federation Aeronautique Internationale in 1911, before the United States issued licenses. She became the first woman to fly the English Channel in 1912 and flew in air races and exhibitions until she died at an air show that year.

Ridley was considered instrumental in the success of Yeager's pioneering flight at what is now Edwards Air Force Base in California. Ridley died as a passenger in a transport plane crash in 1957.

Wagstaff, of St. Augustine, Fla., repeated her national aerobatic victory in 1992 and 1993. The airplane she flew in those contests is in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington.

The aviation hall was founded in Dayton in 1962 and later established by Congress. The Wright brothers were the first two enshrined.

On the Net: www.nationalaviation.org/