ROSCOSMOS - Vostok 6 Mission patch.
June 18, 2018
55 years ago Valentina Tereshkova escaped to the stars and herself became a bright star! The first "Seagull" of Soviet cosmonautics (such a call-sign was invented for Tereshkova by SP Korolev) is still the only woman of the planet who made a single space flight.
Valentina Tereshkova entering inside Vostok 6 spacecraft
The first woman in space was former civilian parachutist Valentina Tereshkova, born 6 March 1937, is a retired Russian cosmonaut, engineer, and politician. She is the first woman to have flown in space, having been selected from more than 400 applicants and five finalists to pilot Vostok 6 on 16 June 1963. In order to join the Cosmonaut Corps, Tereshkova was honorarily inducted into the Soviet Air Force and thus she also became the first civilian to fly in space.
55 years since the flight of Valentina Tereshkova
who entered orbit on June 16, 1963, aboard the Soviet mission Vostok 6. The chief Soviet spacecraft designer, Sergey Korolyov, conceived of the idea to recruit a female cosmonaut corps and launch two women concurrently on Vostok 5/6. However, his plan was changed to launch a male first in Vostok 5, followed shortly afterward by Tereshkova. Khrushchev personally spoke to Tereshkova by radio during her flight.
Valentina Tereshkova
On November 3, 1963, Tereshkova married fellow cosmonaut Andrian Nikolayev, who had previously flown on Vostok 3. On June 8, 1964, she gave birth to the first child conceived by two space travelers. The second woman to fly to space was aviator Svetlana Savitskaya, aboard Soyuz T-7 on August 18, 1982.
More information:
Chronicle of soviet-russian space program: http://en.roscosmos.ru/174/
Valentina Tereshkova on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentina_Tereshkova
Images, Video, Text, Credits: ROSCOSMOS/Wikipedia.
Best regards, Orbiter.ch
