The space race Organized by the United States and the Soviet Union in a decade 1960 converted to Valentina Tereshkova On the The first woman to travel into space.
After several months of strength exercisewhich consisted of Weightless flights, centrifugal tests, parachute jumps, The June 16, 1963, at the age of 26And the he isto astronaut took off to board for orgh The ship called Vostok 6.
In 70 hours and 50 minutes, the ship completed 48 times around the planet and Tereshkova returned to Earth a legend. Although it turned out later, they were for her cThus, three days of hell due to vomiting caused by seasickness during astronautics.
In addition, the space flight could have ended in tragedy, as Tereshkova herself revealed years later: “I realized that I could not return to Earth: the ship was destined to continue going up, not going down. I reported this to the Earth, received new coordinates and they were integrated into the navigation system. ”
Tereshkova’s path was followed by the Soviets Svetlana Savitskaya, who traveled in 1982 aboard a Soyuz T-7 and became the first woman to inhabit an orbital station, Saliut-7, where she stayed for a week.
Twelve years later, in October 1994, the Russian cosmonaut Elena Kondakova He flew and arrived aboard a Soyuz TM-17 at Mir station, where he lived from October 1994 to March 1995, and completed 164 days in space.
And it wasn’t until 2014 that a Russian woman flew into space again: Elena Serovawho was part of Expedition 41/42 to the International Space Station, became the country’s fourth astronaut.
Back from his historical journey, Tereshkova has been appointed trainer of the Cosmonaut Training Centera work that she later combined with members of the Supreme Soviet (Parliament) of the USSR and the chairperson of the Soviet Women’s Committee.
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