Exactly 50 years ago, on June 16, 1963 at 12:30 Moscow time in the USSR, the Vostok-6 spacecraft was launched into Earth satellite orbit, the first in the world piloted by a female citizen. Soviet Union Valentina Tereshkova. She happens to be the only woman in the world to fly solo in space.
Tereshkova’s call sign for the duration of the flight is “Seagull”; the phrase she said before the start: “Hey! Heaven, take off your hat! (modified quote from V. Mayakovsky’s poem “A Cloud in Pants”).
Interesting facts about the first flight of a woman into space.
1. The world's first female cosmonaut was chosen from among the female paratroopers. After the first successful flights into space by Yuri Gagarin and German Titov, Sergei Korolev decided to send a woman into space. This was a politically motivated move. I wanted to be the first in this too.
The search for applicants began at the very end of 1961. The requirements were as follows: parachutist, age up to 30 years, height up to 170 centimeters and weight up to 70 kilograms. Parachutists were given preference because the Vostok cosmonaut had to eject after braking the descent vehicle in the atmosphere and land by parachute, and the period for preparation was initially determined to be short - about six months. I didn’t want to spend a lot of time practicing parachute landings.
Out of more than fifty candidates, five girls were ultimately selected. Valentina Tereshkova was among them. All of them, except for the pilot Valentina Ponomareva, were parachutists. Valentina Tereshkova has been involved in parachuting since 1959 at the Yaroslavl flying club: by the time she was looking for a candidate for space flight, she had completed a total of about 90 jumps.
2. The girls selected for space flight hoped that they would all fly into space sooner or later. Of course, each of the five girls dreamed that she would fly into space. To ensure that the atmosphere in the women’s team was friendly, Korolev promised the girls that they would all be there sooner or later.
But this, as we know, did not happen. Although they really planned to send other girls into space, and they were preparing for this for several years after Valentina Tereshkova’s flight. Only in October 1969 was an order issued to disband the female cosmonaut group. So only Valentina Tereshkova, out of five girls who underwent training, was able to become a real cosmonaut.
3. Valentina Tereshkova had two understudies. In practice, it is accepted that each astronaut must have a backup. In the case of the first female flight, they decided to play it safe - Tereshkova was assigned two doubles at once due to the complexity of the female body. Irina Solovyova and Valentina Ponomareva were substitutes.
Why did the choice fall on Tereshkova? The leadership never justified its choice, but, according to the main existing version, this decision was rather political. Tereshkova was from the workers; her father died during the Soviet-Finnish war when she was two years old. Other girls, for example, Ponomareva and Solovyova, were employees. Nikita Khrushchev, who approved the final candidacy, apparently wanted a girl “from the people” to become the first female cosmonaut.
Valentina Tereshkova, born in a village in the family of a tractor driver and a textile factory worker, met these requirements better than others. Although the doctors who observed the girls were inclined to give priority to other candidates - for example, Irina Solovyova, master of sports in parachuting, who has made more than 700 jumps. According to another version, Sergei Korolev was planning another female flight with access to open space and it was for him that the shore was stronger, according to doctors, Solovyov and Ponomarev.
4. Initially, it was planned for two female crews to fly simultaneously. According to the original plan, two girls were supposed to fly into space at the same time in different devices, but in the spring of 1963 this idea was abandoned. Therefore, on June 14, 1963, in the afternoon, Valery Bykovsky was sent into space on the Vostok-5 spacecraft. His flight is considered the longest single flight to this day: Valery spent almost 5 days in space. That is, two days more than Valentina Tereshkova.
5. Valentina Tereshkova’s relatives learned about the flight only after it ended. The flight could have ended in tragedy, so Valentina Tereshkova kept information about it secret from her family. Before the flight, she told them that she was going to a parachute competition, and they had already learned about what had happened on the radio.
6. B automatic program the ship had an inaccuracy. A mistake was made and the Vostok-6 ship was oriented in such a way that, instead of descending, on the contrary, it raised its orbit. Instead of approaching the Earth, V. Tereshkova moved away from it. The Chaika notified the mission control center about the malfunction, and scientists were able to adjust the program.
For several decades, none of the participants in the events, at Korolev’s request, spoke about this story, and only relatively recently did it become a generally known fact.
7. In total, Valentina Tereshkova flew almost 2 million kilometers. The launch of Vostok-6 took place on the morning of June 16, 1963, and Valentina Tereshkova landed on the morning of June 19. In total, the flight lasted two days, 22 hours and 41 minutes. During this time, the astronaut made 48 orbits around the Earth, flying a total of approximately 1.97 million kilometers.
8. The flight was not easy, the landing was scary. At that time, it was not customary to talk about difficulties. Therefore, Valentina Tereshkova did not report that the flight was difficult. It was very difficult to stay for three days in a heavy space suit that restricted movement. But she persevered: she did not ask for a premature termination of the flight.
Valentina was especially scared during landing. There was a lake below her; she could not control a large heavy parachute that opened at an altitude of 4 km. And although astronauts were taught to splash down, Valentina was not sure that she would have enough strength to stay on the water after an exhausting flight. But in the end, Valentina Tereshkova was lucky: she flew over the lake.
9. The newsreel footage was staged. The newsreels that captured the landing of the descent module were staged. They were filmed the day after Tereshkova actually returned to Earth. When the girl returned, she was in very bad condition and was rushed to the hospital. But she soon came to her senses and felt well the next day.
In the photo: First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Nikita Khrushchev (right) and cosmonauts Valentina Tereshkova, Pavel Popovich (center) and Yuri Gagarin on the podium of the V.I. Lenin Mausoleum on Red Square during a rally dedicated to the successful completion of the flight on the Vostok spacecraft -5" by Valery Bykovsky and "Vostok-6" by Valentina Tereshkova, June 22, 1963:
10. Valentina “Chaika” Tereshkova is not only the first female cosmonaut in history. She is also the only woman on our planet to have completed a solo space flight. All other female cosmonauts and astronauts flew into space only as part of crews. Valentina Tereshkova's flight became a significant page in the history of space exploration.
11. Tereshkova is the first woman in Russia to receive the rank of major general.
12. After fulfilling her dream of space flight, Valentina did not stop dreaming. It would seem that what else could one dream about after the completion of such a flight and universal glory. But Tereshkova did not stop thinking about the possibility of new flights. She really wanted to go on a flight, and was even ready to fly there no way to go back. And after Tereshkova saw all the continents of the Earth from space, she began to dream of visiting Australia. After many years, she managed to fulfill her dream.
The first woman who set off to conquer interplanetary space back in 1963 was Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova. She piloted a spaceship alone, thereby providing scientists with material to study the effect on the female body various factors environment.
To this day, the legendary female astronaut remains the first and only one who was ever able to control a spaceship without the help of other crew members. Valentina Tereshkova, whose name is forever inscribed in the history of the space industry in golden letters, in the eyes of many compatriots and people around the world remains an amazing and fragile woman with an iron character.
The woman who became a legendary figure in the field of astronautics and was the first to receive the rank of major general was born and raised in a family of ordinary workers. Valentina Tereshkova, whose biography will be described briefly in this publication, was born in one of the wonderful spring days– March 6, back in 1937. Read on to see how the life and career of Valentina Tereshkova, who received the status of “the first female cosmonaut,” developed further.
Early childhood and adolescence
The life path of the future Hero of the Soviet Union began in the village of Bolshoye Maslennikovo, located west of Yaroslavl, in the Tutaevsky district. The girl’s parents, who settled here, not only took care of the house, but also promoted industry in the country: her mother was in textiles, and her father was in agricultural production.
The family of the future cosmonaut devoted themselves entirely to work to put the country on its feet in the post-war period. Therefore, young Valya’s childhood was not as joyful as she would have liked. early years Valentina calls her life difficult childhood, the memories of which are associated with devastation, grief, despair and the pain of loss. The fact is that little Valya’s father died during hostilities during the Soviet-Finnish War (1939-1940).
Five years after the death of his father, when the Great Patriotic War, in 1945, Valentina Tereshkova entered school. But, alas, the girl did not have the chance to master the sciences perfectly. After 7 years she had to leave school. The reason for this was the difficult financial situation of the family, because Vali’s father died at the front, and it was difficult for his mother to run the household alone.
Therefore, the future cosmonaut Tereshkova, a few days after graduating from the seventh grade, leaves for the city of Yaroslavl, where she gets a job at a plant. But Valentina’s thirst for knowledge did not disappear. During the day she worked at a tire factory, and after work she ran to classes in the evening to master the general training program among other people representing the working class of Soviet society. And already at that time, the future cosmonaut showed an interest in flying.
Vali's new hobby
Jumping from an airplane with a parachute was especially exciting and exciting for her. Having found out how many jumps she made in total, you may be surprised, because the number 163 (that’s how many times Valentina jumped with a parachute) is a very outstanding indicator even for a man, not to mention the fact that Valya was still a girl!
But classes at the flying club did not foretell the heights that Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova was able to achieve as a result.
By chance, parachutist Valya Tereshkova in the early 60s learned about the idea of the famous Soviet designer and an active figure in the rocket and space industry, Sergei Korolev, to send a woman on a stellar journey. She almost immediately became eager to go on a long space flight. Moreover, Valentina Tereshkova is one of the few candidates who ideally meet the criteria by which Sergei Korolev and other project organizers conduct the selection. Namely:
- Height no more than 1 m 70 cm.
- Weight no more than 70 kg.
- Age not older than 30 years.
It must be said that those wishing to go on a journey to the stars, the exact duration of which was not reported at the initial stage of selection, among Soviet women there was practically none. Thus, Valentina Tereshkova became one of the candidates vying for a place as a pilot in the Vostok-6 spacecraft. As a result, only five girls made it through the selection process and were expected to undergo intensive training and lengthy theoretical studies at the space school.
But the most amazing thing was that she decided to hide the real purpose of leaving from her loved ones: before the flight into space, Valya simply told everyone that she was leaving for the next parachuting competition. Relatives learned about Tereshkova’s heroic journey as a fait accompli, having heard the news on the radio.
3 – 2 – 1… Start
In what year did the historic flight of the first female astronaut take place? In 1963, one June day. From that moment, the biography of Valentina Tereshkova began new round, where she is no longer just a parachutist and social activist, but also a woman who flew into space first and alone (that is, without a crew or crew).
Those who are interested in the detailed details of Valentina Vladimirovna’s journey among the stars, of course, want to know what the exact time of the astronaut’s flight was. It is worth noting that the duration of the stay of the first female spacecraft pilot in orbit did not exceed three days. To be more precise, Valya Tereshkova spent on board the space aircraft Vostok-6 4850 minutes.
According to flight reports, the first woman in space circled our planet 48 times before piloting the spacecraft to its planned landing site. True, the equipment is spaceship began to fail several hours before the expected landing time. As a result of the failure, Valentina Tereshkova was unable to launch the Vostok-6 spacecraft to land using her own efforts. However, thanks to the automatic guidance function, the device was still landed on Earth, although many kilometers further from the intended landmark.
After an extreme landing and three-day fasting Valya exchanged her supplies for food from local residents, which upset Sergei Korolev himself, who later stated that under him, not a single representative of the female half of humanity would go to conquer outer space.
A little less than a quarter of a century will pass before a woman, second only to Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova, will fly into space again. But by that time, Sergei Korolev will already rest in the cemetery.
After the star journey
As we said earlier, a representative of the working class, at the age of 26, conquered space. And at the same age she got married, already holding the title of “the first woman to conquer the vastness of space.”
This marriage cracked about 5 years later, when the family already had Valentina Tereshkova’s daughter, Elena Adrianovna Nikolaeva. It is worth noting that she became the first child in the world whose mother and father flew into space.
Over time, life under the same roof with the “despot” (as Valentina Vladimirovna would call him a few years after the divorce) will become impossible, and the wife will leave, taking her daughter and filing an application for an official divorce from the astronaut.
Although Tereshkova’s personal life did not work out successfully the first time, happiness still awaited the astronaut. After an unsuccessful relationship with Adriyan, she met her second husband, Yuli Shaposhnikov, with whom she was unable to have children together. Julius had nothing to do with astronautics; he died on the eve of the new millennium, in 1999.
As for Valentina Tereshkova’s daughter, Elena also got married twice. And every time the pilot led her down the aisle:
- In the first case, it was I.A. Mayorov, who gave Elena her first son, Alexei (date of birth: 10/20/1995).
- In the second - Rodionov A.Yu., who became the father of Elena’s second son, Andrei (date of birth 06/18/2004).
The children bear the names of their fathers and are currently mastering science: the eldest is at Moscow State University, and the youngest is at school.
Having celebrated her next anniversary in March 2017, the eighty-year-old female cosmonaut Tereshkova is still involved in active political and social activities. The main priorities in her life are family and grandchildren, with whom Valentina Vladimirovna likes to spend her time free time. Author: Elena Suvorova
Initially, it was planned that two female crews would go into space, but in the end, the laurels of the world’s first woman to fly into space went to only Valentina Tereshkova.
First among equals
In March 1963, there were five candidates for this honorary role. Tereshkova was preferred for several reasons. Not last role The political factor also played a role: Tereshkova came from a simple working family, while, for example, Solovyova and Ponomareva could not “boast” of proletarian origin. Tereshkova's father gave his life for his Motherland, fighting in Soviet-Finnish war. The first request that Tereshkova made after returning to Earth was to provide information about the place of her father’s death.
The first female Soviet cosmonaut flew into space on June 16, 1963. The flight duration was about three days. The Vostok-6 ship launched from, and not from the “Gagarin” platform, but from a backup one.
Tereshkova herself did not tell her family that she was flying into space, and explained her absence as a parachute competition. The family learned about the flight from the news.
Tereshkova’s call sign was “Chaika”. "Hey! Heaven, take off your hat! - this is how Tereshkova paraphrased an excerpt from Mayakovsky’s famous poem, addressing this message to the sky, which was supposed to submit to her...
Problems in flight
The flight was accompanied by many problems. Tereshkova could not cope with the tasks of orienting the ship. She herself explained the difficulties by the fact that the commands given to her were polar opposite to the movement not in automatic, but in manual mode, so the ship turned in reverse side. In automatic mode, the polarity was fine, which made it possible to correctly orient and land the ship.
There were problems of another kind, physiological, related to the characteristics of the female body. Numerous observations of female cosmonaut candidates made it possible to establish that on certain days of the monthly life cycle in women, resistance to extreme conditions space flight.
Valentina Tereshkova on board Vostok-6
All candidates completed a pre-flight training and preparation program, after which a full physiological and medical examination was done. Based on its results, the sequence of admission to space flight was determined. The first in this sequence was Valentina Ponomareva, then Irina Solovyova, after her Tatyana Kuznetsova and Zhanna Sergeichik. Valentina Tereshkova was only fifth, but a political factor was added (not without the intervention of N.S. Khrushchev). As a result, despite the conclusion of the medical commission, Valentina Tereshkova was the first to fly into space.
The flight mode could not be maintained as planned: both the delay in the launch of the carrier and the large psycho-emotional load during the launch of the spacecraft into orbit had an impact.
Despite the discomfort and unpleasant sensations, Tereshkova courageously spent about three days in space and steadfastly withstood 48 orbits around the Earth. During the flight, in addition to keeping a logbook, she photographed the horizon. Thanks to these images, aerosol layers were subsequently discovered in the earth's atmosphere.
The return to Earth was successful; the landing was made in Altai, in the Bayevsky region.
One of these “prizes” was the first flight into space by a woman.
There are still a few different versions regarding the authorship of the idea of such a flight. One by one, by myself Sergei Pavlovich Korolev got the idea to send a woman into orbit. According to another, the thought of such a flight German Titov brought from... USA. Visiting America after his flight on Vostok-2, he heard that American feminists were pushing to send a woman into space and found support from the authorities.
Valentina Tereshkova Photo: www.russianlook.com
Be that as it may, the proposal for such a flight reached the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, who decided to rub the Americans in the face again.
In 1962, selection began for women astronauts. The requirements for candidates were extremely stringent: out of 800, only 30 passed the medical examination. Of these 30, only five were enrolled in the detachment itself - Zhanna Erkina, Tatyana Kuznetsova, Irina Solovyova, Valentina Ponomareva And
The training was tough - no discounts were given to women, rightly believing that even space would not offer them. Not everyone liked the idea of a female space flight: the men from the cosmonaut corps understood that a woman would “take away” the place of one of them.
At first the girls were nicknamed “space Amazons,” but the more gallant Yuri Gagarin called the astronauts “birch trees.” And so it went - “space birches”.
Sergei Korolev put the question bluntly to the girls - either family or flights. None of the five candidates refused to go into space - then it seemed to them that there would be a lot of flights.
In addition to politicians, women's flight into space was warmly supported by doctors - for them it represented an excellent opportunity to study the effect of weightlessness on the female body.
Political choice
However, when it came to choosing one of the five, the opinion of doctors was pushed aside.
As one of the founders of Russian space medicine recalled Professor Vladimir Yadzovsky, according to the results of medical tests and theoretical training, the girls were arranged in the following order: 1. Ponomareva Valentina. 2. Solovyova Irina. 3. Kuznetsova Tatyana. 4. Sergeychik Zhanna. 5. Tereshkova Valentina.
Tereshkova, contrary to the opinion of experts, was personally chosen by Nikita Khrushchev, who liked the girl’s background: Valentina’s parents were from a simple family. His father worked as a tractor driver, died in the Soviet-Finnish war, his mother worked in a textile factory.
In addition, Valentina Tereshkova herself started labor activity at a weaving mill, where she became secretary of the Komsomol. This made her compare favorably with Ponomareva, who came from a family of engineers and had a Ph.D. mathematical sciences, and Solovyova, a famous athlete, world champion in parachuting.
Tereshkova was also involved in parachuting, but if Solovyova, for example, had about 700 jumps by that time, then she had less than a hundred.
It is interesting that if the men's cosmonaut corps was formed from pilots, then for the women only Ponomareva was a pilot, the rest were parachutists.
As a result, a decision was made at the very top - Valentina Tereshkova was appointed as the main pilot of the Vostok-6 ship, with Valentina Ponomareva and Irina Solovyova as backup pilots. Doctors insisted on two backups due to “ individual characteristics female body."
Pre-launch "headwash"
The woman's flight plan should not have been inferior in complexity to previous flights. Because the cosmonauts Andriyan Nikolaev And Pavel Popovich On the ships Vostok-3 and Vostok-4 they made a pair flight in August 1962, then Tereshkova’s flight was also planned as a pair. Vostok-5 was supposed to take off Valery Bykovsky, after him, Tereshkova ascended into space on Vostok-6, who was then supposed to land before Bykovsky.
Bykovsky could only help Tereshkova morally: the docking of two ships then existed only in the theoretical plans of the designers.
"Vostok-5" with Bykovsky successfully launched on June 14, 1963, Bykovsky's flight was postponed for a day weather conditions, which led to a delay in Tereshkova’s flight. Doctors then considered that the delayed launch had an adverse effect on the condition of the first female cosmonaut during the flight.
Valentina Tereshkova. Photo: www.russianlook.com
Women are women: when the hairdresser arrived on the eve of the start, all three decided to change their color. So Tereshkova became a brunette, Ponomareva a redhead, and Solovyova a blonde. The flight directors grabbed their heads: photographs of potential space explorers in Moscow were already awaiting publication, and now there was such a change. The girls were forced to “wash away their beauty.”
Valentina Tereshkova launched on the Vostok-6 spacecraft on June 16, 1963. Head of the cosmonaut squad General Kamanin noted in his diary that the start went almost perfectly, and they made no mistake with Tereshkova.
The untimely dream of “Citizen Tereshkova”
Kamanin was in a hurry: problems began already in orbit. Doctors noted that Tereshkova “survived the flight satisfactorily.” She was noted to have lethargy, nausea, and limited movement. Tereshkova simply could not complete some of the planned experiments. If at the beginning of the flight the leaders had plans to increase the duration of Tereshkova’s space travel, then a clear opinion was formed - to plant her sooner, out of harm’s way.
Here, for example, is one of the incidents during the flight: Tereshkova did not get in touch at the appointed time. On Earth they became worried, and then, according to telemetry data, they discovered that the girl was... sleeping. Sleeping at odd hours in orbit is a gross violation of the flight program, and it was impossible to wake Tereshkova from Earth. Then Valery Bykovsky was connected - there was direct radio communication between Vostok-5 and Vostok-6. Bykovsky managed to “push” his partner.
There is a comical incident associated with radio communications between the Vostoks, which Valery Bykovsky recalled. After “Chaika” (Tereshkova’s call sign) took off, “Yastreb” (Bykovsky’s call sign) established contact with her. During the conversation, a radio broadcast from Earth was broadcast on board Vostok 5 - a TASS message about the first flight of a woman into space. Having heard the phrase from this message, “Seagull” asked “Hawk” offendedly:
Valera, why do you call me “Citizen Tereshkova”?
On the eve of the 50th anniversary of her flight, Valentina Tereshkova said that an erroneous flight program was introduced into the Vostok-6 on-board system, which she had to correct. If the automation had worked according to the original program, Vostok-6 would have gone into a higher orbit instead of landing, which would have meant the death of the astronaut.
Designer's Curse
But the program was corrected in time, and on June 19, 1963, the Vostok-6 descent module landed safely in the Altai Territory. But rescuers who arrived at the landing site discovered that Tereshkova had committed two gross violations: she began to eat food brought local residents, and also distributed tubes of space food as souvenirs.
The ban was not at all tyranny - the food returned from space had to be studied by specialists, and the earthly food that Tereshkova ate violated the purity of medical tests, and, moreover, could have an unpredictable effect on the space explorer herself.
Korolev, having learned about the violation, was terribly angry. In his anger, he slammed his fist on the table and declared: “As long as I’m alive, not a single woman will fly into space again.”
Perhaps this was said in the heat of the moment, in the heat of the moment. There were plans to launch an all-female crew, plans for a woman to go into outer space immediately after Alexey Leonov.
In fact, the “curse of Korolev” turned out to be a prophecy: he died in 1966, and after Tereshkova in the USSR, the next woman to fly into space Svetlana Savitskaya, and this only happened in 1982. Irina Solovyova and Valentina Ponomareva were not destined to go into space.
Cosmic marriage
As for Tereshkova herself, she remained in the cosmonaut corps until 1997, rising to the rank of major general, but she no longer flew into space. Her main occupation was socio-political activity. Currently she is a State Duma deputy from the party " United Russia"and member of the central headquarters of the All-Russian Popular Front.
There was another event in Tereshkova’s life, about which there is still a lot of gossip - in November 1963 she married cosmonaut Andriyan Nikolaev. Tereshkova and Nikolaev thus became the first “space” married couple. The wedding celebrations were personally organized by Nikita Khrushchev, which gave rise to the version that the young people were “ordered to get married.” According to another hypothesis, Nikolaev and Tereshkova were “brought together” by doctors who wanted to get “cosmic offspring”.
Fifty years ago, on June 16, 1963, the space flight of the world's first female cosmonaut, Valentina Tereshkova, began.
Pilot-cosmonaut, the world's first female cosmonaut Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova was born on March 6, 1937 in the village of Maslennikovo, Tutaevsky district, Yaroslavl region. Her father, Vladimir Aksenovich Tereshkov (1912-1940), worked as a tractor driver and died during the Soviet-Finnish war. Mother, Elena Fedorovna Tereshkova (Kruglova) (1913-1987), worked on a collective farm. In the summer of 1945, she and her three children moved to the city of Yaroslavl and began working at the Krasny Perekop industrial textile factory.
Valentina Tereshkova graduated from a seven-year school in 1953, an evening school for working youth in 1955, and the Yaroslavl Correspondence College light industry in 1960, Military Engineering Academy named after N.E. Zhukovsky in 1969, receiving the specialty "pilot-cosmonaut-engineer". Candidate of Technical Sciences (1977).
Tereshkova began her career in 1954 at the Yaroslavl tire plant in the assembly shop as a cutter. In 1955, she moved to the Yaroslavl industrial textiles plant "Krasny Perekop" as a roving worker in the tape shop.
From 1960 to 1962 she was the released secretary of the Komsomol committee of this plant.
Since 1959, she has been involved in parachuting at the Yaroslavl flying club and made 163 parachute jumps.
Cosmonaut Alexey Leonov talks about his colleague, “Valyusha” Tereshkova
In February 1962, Valentina Tereshkova was enrolled as a student cosmonaut. From March to November 1962, she underwent general space training and after passing state exams was enrolled in the cosmonaut corps. From January to May 1963, she prepared for a flight on the Vostok-6 spacecraft under the women's flight program as part of a group together with Irina Solovyova, Valentina Ponomareva, Zhanna Erkina. She was designated as the prime candidate for the flight.
The training, during which the body's resistance to the factors of space flight was tested, included a thermal chamber, a sound chamber, practicing actions in zero gravity on the MiG-15, parachute training, etc.
She made a space flight on June 16-19, 1963 as commander of the Vostok-6 spacecraft under the group flight program with the Vostok-5 spacecraft, piloted by Valery Bykovsky. Call sign - "Seagull". The flight duration was two days, 22 hours and 50 minutes. During this time, her spacecraft circled the Earth 48 times.
During the flight, a large volume of medical and biological research was carried out and further development and improvement of manned spacecraft systems was carried out under joint flight conditions.
Tereshkova spent 2 days 22 hours 50 minutes in orbit, making 48 orbits around the Earth and flying 1 million 971 thousand km. Tereshkova had a hard time with the flight, however, despite the physical discomfort, she kept a logbook and took photographs of the horizon, which were later used to detect aerosol layers in the atmosphere.
The next flight of a woman into space took place only 19 years later; Svetlana Savitskaya became the second female cosmonaut.
In 1965-1966, Tereshkova was trained in a group to fly on the Voskhod spacecraft. In 1978, after the renewal of the idea of women's flight, she passed the State Medical Commission and received permission to undergo special training.
In 1997, she was expelled from the cosmonaut corps and retired from the Armed Forces in connection with her achievement age limit. Retired Aviation Major General.
Since 1966, Tereshkova has been active in government and public activities.
From 1968 to 1987 she was the chairman of the Soviet Women's Committee.
Elected as a deputy Supreme Council USSR (1966-1989), member of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (1974-1989); was vice-president of the International Democratic Federation of Women (1969-1987), member of the World Peace Council.
In 1987-1992, Valentina Tereshkova was the chairman of the presidium of the Union Soviet societies friendship and cultural ties with foreign countries.
From 1992 to 2004 - Chairman of the Presidium of the Russian Association for International Cooperation.
In 1992-1993 - Deputy Chairman of the Russian Agency for International Cooperation.
From 1994 to 2004 Valentina Tereshkova was the head Russian Center international scientific and cultural cooperation under the government of the Russian Federation (since 2002 - under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation); Member of the board of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation from 2002 to 2004.
In December 1995, she ran for the State Duma of Russia of the 2nd convocation from the movement "Our Home is Russia", and in December 2003 - for the State Duma of the 4th convocation from the electoral bloc " Russian Party LIFE - Party of the Revival of Russia"; but was not elected.
From 2008 to 2011 she was a deputy State Duma Yaroslavl region (now - Yaroslavl regional Duma) of the fifth convocation from the United Russia party. Since March 25, 2008 - Deputy Chairman of the Yaroslavl Regional Duma.
On December 4, 2011, Tereshkova was elected to the State Duma of the Russian Federation of the sixth convocation as part of the federal list of candidates nominated by the All-Russian political party"United Russia".
On March 13, 2012, she was approved as deputy head of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs.
She has the first category in parachuting, the title "Honored Master of Sports of the USSR" (1963).
Valentina Tereshkova - Hero of the Soviet Union, pilot-cosmonaut of the USSR (1963), laureate of the State Prize of the Russian Federation for outstanding achievements in the field of humanitarian work (2009), awarded many orders and medals, both from Russia and other countries. Among them are two Orders of Lenin (1963, 1981), the Order of the October Revolution (1971), the Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1987), the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, II (2007) and III (1997) degrees, the Order of Honor (2003), Order of Friendship (2011). She was awarded the titles Hero of Socialist Labor of Czechoslovakia, Hero People's Republic Bulgaria, Hero of Labor Democratic Republic Vietnam, Hero of the Mongolian People's Republic, awarded the honorary title " Greatest Woman XX century." Tereshkova was awarded a number of awards from scientific, public and religious organizations.
April 12, 2011. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev awards Valentina Tereshkova with the Order of Friendship
Valentina Vladimirovna - honorable Sir 18 Russian and foreign cities. A crater on the Moon and a small planet, as well as streets in several cities, are named after her. In Moscow, on the Alley of Space Heroes, a bronze bust of the first female cosmonaut was installed.
In 2013, a postage stamp was issued in India in honor of Tereshkova.
Valentina Tereshkova was married twice. Her first husband was USSR pilot-cosmonaut Andriyan Nikolaev (1929-2004). The wedding took place on November 3, 1963. Until her divorce from Nikolaev in 1982, Tereshkova bore the double surname Nikolaeva-Tereshkova. In 1964, Tereshkova gave birth to a daughter, Elena. The second husband of Valentina Tereshkova was Yuliy Shaposhnikov (1931-1999), Major General of the Medical Service, Director Central Institute traumatology and orthopedics (CITO).
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