Who is valentina tereshkova

Shortly after the flight of cosmonaut Gherman Titov in September of she wrote a letter to the space center volunteering for the cosmonaut team.

Unknown to her, Soviet space officials were considering the selection of a group of women parachutists. In December Valentina was invited to Moscow for an interview and medical examination. The women were subjected to the same centrifuge rides and zero-G flights as male cosmonauts. They were also commissioned as junior lieutenants in the Soviet Air Force and given fight instruction.

The moment she could, Valentina Tereshkova joined the renowned paramilitary flying club in her native Yaroslavl without telling her mother and trained almost every weekend. She has more than 90 jumps under her belt. It is hard to believe that the woman sitting across the table from me enthusing about her early hobby is All right, she turned 80 only a few days ago, but even immaculate hair and makeup can only flatter so much.

She looks to me not a day over My gaze keeps alighting on her elegant hands with their flawless dark nail varnish. My own rather younger hands look wrinkled and gnarled by comparison. We are somewhere deep and indeterminate within the cavernous Science Museum in London, and Tereshkova had arrived, as dignitaries tend to do, suddenly, and with a flurry of suited escorts.

I had seen her so often, in photographs, in film, and from a distance in person — that she seemed entirely familiar, from her tailored suit to the medal she wears, red banner with gold star, denoting her status as a Hero of the Soviet Union, then the highest state award. The reason for her celebrity is almost as hard to believe now as the parachuting.

Over 50 years ago, in , Tereshkova became the first woman to go into space, and it was her parachuting experience that qualified her for selection. She was only 26 when she made her one and only space flight, but that feat has defined the rest of her life. It propelled her into the upper reaches of the Soviet elite, and gave her security for life. That elevation though came at a life-long cost: a treadmill of obligations that has lasted more than half a century.

Public speaking, accepting honours, roving the world as a citizen-diplomat, being a very visible part of Soviet, and now Russian, public life, are roles that she continues to fulfil to this day.

It is one of a series of UK-Russia collaborations, following the hugely successful Russian space exhibition at the museum last year. Has she honestly enjoyed this life lived so much in the public eye? Aware of the current chill in the international climate, Tereshkova sees herself, not for the first time with a responsibility to help improve things through public diplomacy.

In the UK, she might be surprised to discover how relatively few now know her name. The global impact of her flight, with the near-universal recognition that followed, has faded over the years, though not in Russia, and not for me, as a child of that era.

Tereshkova was not able to attend school until she was eight, and had to withdraw to work in the same textile plant as her mother when she was sixteen. Despite economic hardships, she continued her education through correspondence courses, and in , began to parachute as a hobby. By Valentina Tereshkova had parachuted out of more than aircraft.

When Tereshkova and four other female cosmonauts were selected for the Soviet space program on March 12, , she became the first cosmonaut recruit who lacked experience as a test pilot. Her selection was instead based on her parachuting skills early Soviet craft had to be exited via parachute prior to landing and propaganda values such as her proletarian background, and war hero father. In February , she was selected along with three other woman parachutists and a female pilot to begin intensive training to become a cosmonaut.

In , Tereshkova was chosen to take part in the second dual flight in the Vostok program, involving spacecrafts Vostok 5 and Vostok 6. On June 14, , Vostok 5 was launched into space with cosmonaut Valeri Bykovsky aboard. With Bykovsky still orbiting the earth, Tereshkova was launched into space on June 16 aboard Vostok 6. The two spacecrafts had different orbits but at one point came within three miles of each other, allowing the two cosmonauts to exchange brief communications.

On June 19, after just under three days in space, Vostok 6 reentered the atmosphere, and Tereshkova successfully parachuted to earth after ejecting at 20, feet. Bykovsky and Vostok 5 landed safely a few hours later. In November , she married fellow cosmonaut Andrian Nikolayev, reportedly under pressure from Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev , who saw a propaganda advantage in the pairing of the two single cosmonauts.

The couple made several goodwill trips abroad, had a daughter, and later separated. She never entered space again, and hers was the last space flight by a female cosmonaut until the s.