Valentina Tereshkova – First Woman in Space

Valentina’s life reflects the greatness one can be in her entire life. Valentina Tereshkova is the first woman cosmonaut.

Valentina Tereshkova was born on 6 March 1937. Her father was a tractor driver and her mother worked in a textile factory. Her father died during the Second World War. Her mother, with three children, went to Jaroslavl. Since 1954, Valentina worked at different factories following her mother.

Valentina loved parachuting. When she had chance she went to the aeroclub and practiced parachute jumping. In 1962 she became a member of the Soviet cosmonaut group. At the age of 22, she had become an avid skydiver. Meanwhile the space race was in full swing. Russia had launched the first man, Yuri Gagarin, into space in on 12 April 1961 with America following closely behind, launching Alan Shepard a month later. This is when Valentina decided to become an astronaut. Her parachuting experience helped her beat out over 400 applicants to pilot the Vostok 6 spacecraft on a solo mission at the age of 25. In the world of men she faced lot of difficulties in training and following them, but yet determined to follow the risky procedures to be strong. On June 16th, 1963 Vostok made its way out of atmosphere with Valentina behind the wheel. This day the first woman to travel to space, Valentina called out as the craft took off. It is said that she orbited the Earth an astounding 48 times in less than 3 days. While in orbit, she realized that her capsule was mistakenly programmed to not return to Earth and was orienting itself further and further away from Earth. But she managed to contacted ground control for assistance and navigated back to Earth.  Despite Valentina’s success, it took 19 years until another woman traveled to space. Valentina is the second youngest person to ever go into space and remains the youngest woman ever to do so.

Moral: Work hard and you will get there.

15 thoughts on “Valentina Tereshkova – First Woman in Space

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  1. Chiru, in Russia I think women were given work in early 20th century only. Reason Russia is the superpower and highly developed. Thanks for improving my weak Gk 😉. Aaj second T20 hai, Aus vs Ind aur India Mai holiday bhi 😁. Starts Live at 11.20AM in Saudi….

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