Valentina Tereshkova (1963): The First Woman in Space

Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to travel into space when she was launched aboard the Soviet spacecraft Vostok 6 on 16 June 1963. A former textile worker and amateur parachutist, she orbited the Earth 48 times in almost three days before landing safely on 19 June. Her flight was a milestone of the Cold War space race and remained unmatched by any other woman for nineteen years.

Background: the space race and the women’s group

By the early 1960s the Soviet Union had already scored a series of firsts in space: the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, in 1957, the first animal in orbit, and the first human spaceflight by Yuri Gagarin in April 1961. Soviet leaders valued such achievements as proof of the strength of their system, and planners looked for further “firsts” that the United States could not quickly match.

Sending a woman into space was one of them. General Nikolai Kamanin, who was in charge of cosmonaut selection and training for the Soviet Air Force, pressed for a female cosmonaut group, partly because rumours suggested that the Americans might fly a woman. Chief designer Sergei Korolev, who led the Vostok programme, supported the idea. Because the Vostok capsule landed automatically and its pilot ejected and descended by parachute, experience with parachute jumping was considered more important than experience as a pilot.

From several hundred candidates, five women were selected in February 1962: Tatyana Kuznetsova, Irina Solovyova, Zhanna Yorkina, Valentina Ponomaryova and Valentina Tereshkova. They were enlisted in the Soviet Air Force and trained for months in isolation chambers, centrifuges, parachute jumping and aircraft flights that simulated weightlessness.

Who was Valentina Tereshkova?

Tereshkova was born on 6 March 1937 in the village of Bolshoye Maslennikovo, near Yaroslavl on the Volga, north-east of Moscow. Her father, a tractor driver, was killed in the Soviet-Finnish Winter War when she was a small child, and she was raised by her mother. She left school at around 16, worked in a tyre factory and then at the Krasny Perekop textile mill in Yaroslavl, while continuing her education by correspondence.

In her spare time she joined the local flying club and made her first parachute jump in 1959. She was active in the Komsomol, the Communist youth organisation, which made her an attractive candidate politically: a young working woman from a modest background who embodied the official ideals of Soviet society. Kamanin and Korolev chose her as the prime pilot for the women’s flight, with Solovyova as her backup.

The flight of Vostok 6

The flight was planned as a “group flight” alongside another spacecraft. Valery Bykovsky was launched in Vostok 5 on 14 June 1963. Two days later, on 16 June, Tereshkova lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Soviet Kazakhstan aboard Vostok 6. Her radio call sign was Chaika, meaning “seagull”.

The two capsules were placed in similar orbits, and at their closest they passed within roughly 5 kilometres of each other. Vostok craft had no engines for changing orbit, so this was not a true rendezvous of the kind later practised by the Americans in the Gemini 6A and Gemini 7 mission, but it allowed radio contact between the two cosmonauts.

Tereshkova kept a log, took photographs of the horizon that were later used to study layers in the atmosphere, and appeared on live Soviet television. She suffered from nausea and physical discomfort, and her cramped spacesuit and the restrictive seat made the long flight tiring. Years later she and others stated that an error in the spacecraft’s orientation settings had to be corrected before re-entry; for decades this was not discussed publicly, and accounts of the episode differ.

After 48 orbits, on 19 June 1963, the Vostok 6 capsule re-entered the atmosphere. As planned, Tereshkova ejected at an altitude of several kilometres and landed separately by parachute in the Altai Krai region of southern Siberia, near the border with Kazakhstan. Bykovsky landed the same day after almost five days in space, a record for a solo flight that still stands.

Key people

• Valentina Tereshkova (born 1937): pilot of Vostok 6 and the first woman in space.
• Valery Bykovsky (1934-2019): pilot of Vostok 5, the companion spacecraft in the group flight.
• Sergei Korolev (1907-1966): chief designer of the Soviet space programme and of the Vostok spacecraft.
• Nikolai Kamanin (1908-1982): Air Force general responsible for cosmonaut training, whose diaries are a key source on the selection.
• Irina Solovyova (born 1937): Tereshkova’s backup, who never flew in space.

Reception and later life

Tereshkova returned to a hero’s welcome. She was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union and the Order of Lenin, appeared in Red Square with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, and toured the world as a goodwill ambassador. In November 1963 she married the cosmonaut Andriyan Nikolayev; their daughter Elena, born in 1964, was the first child whose parents had both flown in space. The couple later separated.

She never flew again. She studied at the Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy, graduating in 1969, and in 1977 earned a higher degree in technical sciences. From 1968 to 1987 she headed the Soviet Women’s Committee, and she held senior positions in the Communist Party and the Supreme Soviet. She retired from the Air Force in 1997 with the rank of major general. Since 2011 she has served as a deputy in the Russian State Duma.

The rest of the women’s group never flew, and it was disbanded in 1969. The Soviet Union did not send another woman into space until Svetlana Savitskaya in 1982, and the United States flew its first woman, Sally Ride, in 1983.

Myths and facts

Myth: Tereshkova was an untrained passenger. In fact she trained for over a year, including dozens of parachute jumps, centrifuge runs and long spells in isolation chambers. The Vostok capsule was largely automatic, but the same was true for the male cosmonauts.

Myth: her flight was purely a propaganda stunt with no scientific value. Political motives were central, but the flight also produced medical data on how a woman’s body responded to almost three days of weightlessness, alongside the atmospheric photographs she took.

Fact: she still holds records. Tereshkova remains the only woman to have flown a solo space mission and, at 26, one of the youngest women to have flown in space.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1937, 6 March: Valentina Tereshkova is born near Yaroslavl.
• 1959: She makes her first parachute jump with a local flying club.
• 1962, February: She is selected as one of five women in the first female cosmonaut group.
• 1963, 14 June: Valery Bykovsky is launched in Vostok 5.
• 1963, 16 June: Tereshkova is launched in Vostok 6 and becomes the first woman in space.
• 1963, 19 June: Tereshkova and Bykovsky both return to Earth.
• 1963, 3 November: She marries cosmonaut Andriyan Nikolayev.
• 1969: The women’s cosmonaut group is disbanded.
• 1982, August: Svetlana Savitskaya becomes the second woman in space.

Why it matters

Tereshkova’s flight showed that women could endure spaceflight as well as men, at a time when many doubted it. Although no woman followed her for two decades, her example became a lasting symbol, and today women regularly serve as astronauts, commanders and spacewalkers. Her mission also marked one of the last great Soviet “firsts” of the Vostok era before the space race turned towards the Moon.