Valentina Tereshkova - Valentina Tereshkova, The First Lady of Space: In Her Own Words

Affectionately known as the First Lady of Space, Valentina Vladimirovna"Valya" Tereshkova became the first woman to fly into space, spendingnearly three days piloting Vostok 6 beginning on 16 June 1963twentyyears before Sally Ride became the first American woman to reach orbit.

Born on 6 March 1937 in the village of Maslennikovo, Yaroslavl Oblast, incentral Russia about 170 miles northeast of Moscow, Tereshkova was a textile factoryassembly worker who became interested in parachuting at a young age. Hiding itfrom her family, she trained as a competitive skydiver at the local Aeroclub;making her first jump on 21 May 1959.

After the 1961 flight of Yuri Gagarin, Sergei Korolev, the chief Sovietrocket engineer, decided that the USSR should send a woman into space. Out ofmore than four hundred applicants, five were selected on 16 February 1962:Tatyana Kuznetsova, Irina Solovyova, Zhanna Yorkina, Valentina Ponomaryova, andTereshkova. Qualifications included that they be parachutists less than 30years of age, under 170 cm (5 feet 7 inches) tall, and under 70 kg (154 lbs.)in weight.

The group spent several months in intensive training, including rockettheory, spacecraft engineering, weightless flights, isolation tests, centrifugetests, parachute jumps and pilot training in jet fighters. Concluding withexaminations in November 1962, the remaining candidates were commissionedJunior Lieutenants in the Soviet Air Force. Tereshkova, Solovyova andPonomaryova were the leading candidates and a joint mission profile wasdeveloped that would see a woman launched into space on a solo Vostok flight inMarch or April 1963.

After watching the successful launch of Valery Bykovsky in Vostok 5 on14 June 1963, Tereshkova began final preparations for her own flight. She was26 at the time. On the morning of 16 June 1963, Tereshkova and her back-upSolovyova were both dressed in spacesuits and taken to the launch pad by bus.After completing her communication and life support checks, she was sealedinside the Vostok. After a two-hour countdown, Vostok 6 launchedfaultlessly, and Tereshkova became the first woman in space. Her call sign inthis flight was Chaika [Seagull].

Tereshkova spent nearly three days in space, orbiting the Earth 48 times. Onthis flight, she logged more flight time than the combined time of all Americanastronauts who had flown before that date. Tereshkova maintained a flight logand took photographs of the horizon, which were later used to identify aerosollayers within the atmosphere.

Several months after the Vostok 6 flight she married AndriyanNikolayev (19292004) on 3 November 1963 at the Moscow Wedding Palace.Khrushchev presided at the wedding party attended by top government and spaceprogram leaders.

On 8 June 1964, she gave birth to a daughter, Elena AndrianovnaNikolaeva-Tereshkova, who grew up to become a doctor; and the first person tohave both a mother and father who traveled into space. Valentina and Nikolayevdivorced in 1982. She later remarried orthopedist Yuliy Shaposhnikov, whopassed away in 1999.

Following her career as a cosmonaut, she became a prominent member of theCommunist Party of the Soviet Union holding various political offices includinghead of the Russian Cultural Centers around the globe. It was while in thisposition she contributed some of her memoirs to the history journal, Quest:The History of Spaceflight, the first time any had been published inEnglish.