Valentina Tereshkova

On 3rd of November in 1963, Valentina married a co-cosmonaut Andrian Nikolayev. They had a daughter Yelena who was born the following year. Later she separated from her husband and married an orthopaedist.

A lunar crater and a minor planet were named after her. Monuments, schools and museums have been named after her to honour her achievement.

Valentina has been awarded honorary citizenships of a number of countries

On March 6th of 1937, Valentina was born in Maslennikovo in Russia. As part of a peasant family which had already lost the head of the family, Vladimir Tereshkov, to war, Valentina along with her brothers and sisters were raised by her mother Elena who worked in a textile plant.

In 1945, Valentina started school quite late, but eight years later discontinued her studies.

Later, she went to stay with her grandmother in Yaroslavl and worked as a trainee in a tire factory, during 1954.

In 1955, to help her family further, she started working as a loom operator in a nearby textile mill. During this time, she took correspondence courses and graduated from the ‘Light Industry Technical School’.

Valentina took a keen interest in parachuting and was given training in skydiving at the local aeroclub. As a parachuteer, she jumped for the first time at the age of 22.

Because of her training in parachuting, Valentina was among the five women who were selected for the cosmonaut program in 1961. The Soviet government was keen to send women to space after the successful venture of Yuri Gagarin and Valentina fit the bill with her parachuting skills, despite lacking any formal training for the space program.

Valentina was selected as she could handle the jump needed at 20,000 feet with the ejection from the capsule in ‘Vostok’ spacecraft. The jump needed expertise and agility which could only be handled by a trained parachuteer.

In the year 1963, Valentina was part of a second double flight which involved handling spacecrafts like ‘Vostok 5’ and ‘Vostok 6’. There was an eighteen-month long extensive program, prior to the flight, where all the candidates learned all the nuances of space travel.

On 14th of June, 1963, ‘Vostok 5’ was launched in space and Valeri Bykovsky who was a fellow cosmonaut, orbited the earth. ‘Vostok 6’ carrying Valentina was launched in space a few days later.

One of her well-known articles, ‘Women in Space’ which elaborated her views of women involved in scientific pursuits was published in the American journal known as ‘Impact of Science in Society’.