Valentina Tereshkova is a retired soviet cosmonaut who
became the first woman in space aboard Volstock 6 in 1963.
Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova was born March 6th, 1937 in
Bolshoye Maslennikovo in the Yaroslavl Oblast of the Soviet
Union. Her father, Vladimir
Aksyenovich Tereshkov was a tractor driver, and her mother, Elena Fedorovna,
worked in a textile plant. She had a younger brother and an older sister. Valentina's
father Vladimir
went missing in action in the Finno-Russian War of 1939-1940, and so Valentina
and her siblings were raised by their mother.
Due to World War II, Valentina didn't begin attending school
until she was 8 years old. At 17 she had
to leave school to work at a textile mill in order to help support her family;
however, she continued her education through a correspondence course. Valentina
learned to sky dive through an auxiliary organization of the Soviet Air Force
located in her town (Yaroslavl).
She made her first jump in 1959 and created a Parachute Club at the textile mill
where she worked.
In April 1961, the Soviet Union launched
Vostok-1 carrying Yuri Gagarin, the first man, into space. Cosmonaut Chief Nikolai Kamanin believed it
was the patriotic duty of the program to send a woman into space. In October of
1961, Kamanin added a requirement for five women to be chosen among the 50 new
cosmonauts being recruited at the time.
Since the Vostok vessel was completely automated, piloting experience
was not a requirement. However, since the Vostok cosmonaut was ejected clear of
the capsule after re-entry and landed on earth under a personal parachute, parachuting
experience was required. There were 58
women candidates initially, of which 40 were interviewed.
Valentina was one of the five women selected as cosmonaut candidates. She was excellent at physical training, but
had more difficulty with rocketry and spacecraft engineering. All five were commissioned as lieutenants in
the Soviet Air Force. Valentina became a
full member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
The first women flight was planned and Premier Khrushchev was to make the final
decision on which of the five female Cosmonauts would go. Khrushchev felt that Valentina
embodied the ideal of the New Soviet Woman; she was a member of the communist
party and a factory worker with a proletariat background. Valentina also had
looks, charm, and an outgoing personality well disposed for celebrity.
On June 16th, 1963, Vostok 6 was launched and Valentina Tereshkova
became the first woman in space. The
flight was not without difficulty; the orbiter was oriented incorrectly and
needed to be corrected, unfortunately it took her a day to convince ground
control. Valentina became queasy during the flight and became sick. To reduce
what ground control perceived as space sickness, Valentina was told to stay
strapped into her chair for the three day duration of the flight. When she
finally landed, she suffered a blow to her nose that resulted in a dark bruise.
In the propaganda tours that followed, she had to wear heavy makeup to conceal
the bruise.
Valentina married fellow Cosmonaut Andrian Nikolayev on November 3, 1963 with
top space program leaders and even Premeir Krushchev in attendence. She obtained a graduate level engineering
degree at the Zhukovskiy
Military Air
Academy in 1969. With the disbandment of the female cosmonauts
detachment, Valentina entered politics and became a prominent communist party
member and an international representative for the soviet space program. In 1982, after a tumultuous marriage, she and
Nikolayev
divorced and she married Yuliy Shapolshnikov, a physician for the space
program. Tereshkova and Yuliy remained
married until his death in 1999.
Although Tereshkova never returned to space, she remained closely
associated with the space agency until her retirement in 1999.
Among Valentina Tereshkova's many awards are the Orders of Lenin, recognition
as a Hero of the Soviet Union, the United
Nation Gold Medal of Peace, the Simba International Women's Movement Award, and
the Joliot-Curie Gold Medal.
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