At the age of 26, Valentina Tereshkova marked a milestone in space exploration by becoming the first woman to travel into outer space. Chosen from more than 400 applicants to pilot the Vostok 6 spacecraft, she remains to this day the only woman to complete a solo mission.
Who Was Valentina Tereshkova?
In 1961, the Soviet Union began its history of space exploration through manned spacecraft placed in terrestrial orbit. In that year, Yuri Gagarin became the first astronaut to fly into outer space when he piloted the Vostok 1 capsule. Only one year later, on February 16, 1962, Valentina Tereshkova was selected from among four hundred applicants to fly Vostok 6.
At only 25 years old, she was chosen because of her extensive parachuting experience, a characteristic that was part of the essential requirements. Tereshkova was an honorary member of the Soviet Air Force along with four other finalists in the program to launch the first woman into orbit. But in the end, she was chosen to become a cosmonaut and pilot the Vostok 6.
A Woman’s First Trip to Space
On June 16, 1963, one year after her selection and arduous training, Valentina Tereshkova embarked solo on the Vostok 6 capsule to undertake the first spaceflight by a woman. The spacecraft was successfully launched and reached Earth orbit. Valentina, whose nickname on the mission was Chaika (Russian for seagull), completed 70 hours of flight in space. During the three-day mission, Vostok 6 circled the Earth a total of 48 times.
It was not an easy trip; Tereshkova herself later admitted that throughout the three days she spent in space, she experienced severe nausea and headaches. Despite this, the cosmonaut managed to maintain control of the mission at all times to ensure its success. She even had to correct a programming error in the spacecraft’s trajectory to prevent it from drifting away from Earth and to ensure its safe return. She also kept the logbook up to date to later analyze the details on the ground and took photographs of the space horizon, which later helped to discover the aerosols present in the atmosphere.
After 48 laps around the planet and almost three days of space flight, on June 19, 1963, Tereshkova successfully entered the Earth’s atmosphere, then abandoned her capsule and completed her descent by parachute from 6,000 meters above the Earth’s surface. She finally landed safely in Karaganda, Kazakhstan, and since then became an icon of space aeronautics not only in the Soviet Union but also worldwide for having become the first woman to fly into space.
Although other missions of the Vostok program were scheduled to take other women into space, Vostok 6 was the last spacecraft of the program to travel into space and it took 19 years for another woman, Svetlana Savitskaya, to travel into space again.
This story was originally published in Spanish by Alejandra Martínez in Ecoosfera.
