Meet VALENTINA TERESHKOVA, the first woman to travel into space.
Born March 6, 1937, Tereshkova left school at 16 to work in a textile mill. When she was 22, she joined an Aeroclub to indulge her hobbies of skydiving and parachuting. She was tapped by the military at age 24 to train as a cosmonaut. Why? She was a skilled “competitive amateur parachutist”, a skill needed during the mandatory ejection from the capsule at 20,000 feet during re-entry. She joined the Soviet Air Force as part of the Cosmonaut Corps, achieving the honorary rank of lieutenant after her training. Out of 400 women who applied to train, and five who were selected, Tereshkova was the only one chosen to go to space.
On June 14, 1963, at the age of 26, with only 18 months training, Tereshkova became the first female to go into space. (And, because her rank was honorary, she is technically the first civilian to go to space.) Over the course of 70 hours, she orbited Earth 48 times. Despite her spacecraft being remotely controlled AND discovering her re-entry settings were incorrect, she made it back to Earth safely. Once she landed, she had dinner with the local family that found her. (She was reprimanded for this.)
Her life has been spent as an apparatchik, she’s never returned to space, but she should be recognized for her fearless willingness to travel to space…in 1963…a feat no other woman would complete until 19 years later.
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