Honorary citizen of Montreux, Switzerland, Valentina Tereshkova
Photo: Dmitry Lekay
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Anniversary of the First Woman in Space
June 16 is the 45th anniversary of Valentina Tereshkova’s flight into space. She was the first woman to do so. She orbited the Earth 48 times in the Vostok 6 spacecraft was also the first woman general in the Soviet Union. Tereshkova was born into a peasant family in the village of Maslennikovo, Yaroslavl Region, in 1937. Her mother worked in a textile plant. Her father was a tractor driver who died in the Soviet-Finnish War in 1939. After completing school, Tereshkova worked in a textile plant and studied light industry in night school.
Tereshkova was also a flying hobbyist. She made 163 parachute jumps. In 1962, she succeeded in joining the first women’s cosmonaut division, where she underwent grueling preparation. In 1963, she orbited the Earth for 70 hours and 50 minutes in the Vostok 6, along with her male colleague Valery Bykovsky in Vostok 5. Besides being risky, the flight was extremely uncomfortable, and the cosmonauts were practically unable to move for the entirety of the flight, almost three days. An error in calculations would have sent her into space permanently, if she had not noticed it in time for it to be corrected.
After the historical flight, Tereshkova was involved in training cosmonauts, but gradually turned more and more of her attention to social causes. She also obtained a candidate’s degree (comparable to a Ph.D.) in flight engineering in 1969. She was the chairman of the Committee of Soviet Women from 1968 to 1987 and vice president of the International Democratic Federation of Women from 1969 to 1987. From 1987 to 1992, Tereshkova was the chairman of the presidium of the Union of Soviet Friendship and Cultural Exchange Societies. In 1992, she became the chairman of the Russian Association of International Cooperation. From 1992 to 1995, she was the first deputy chairman of the Russian Agency for International Cooperation and Development. Since 1994, she has an executive at the Russian Center for Scientific and Cultural Cooperation.
In addition, Tereshkova is a professor and the author of over 50 scientific papers. She is also the holder of a long list of awards from the USSR, Russia, UN and a number of other countries. She is an honorary citizen of cities around the world and has had a crater of the Moon named after her.
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