Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova (born 6 March 1937) is a Russian engineer, politician, and former Soviet cosmonaut. She was the first woman in space, having flown a solo mission on Vostok 6 on 16 June 1963. She orbited the Earth 48 times, spent almost three days in space, is the only woman to have been on a solo space mission and is the last surviving Vostok programme cosmonaut. Twenty-six years old at the time of her spaceflight, she remains the youngest and first woman to orbit Earth.
Before her selection for the Soviet space programme, Tereshkova was a textile factory worker and an amateur skydiver. She joined the Air Force as part of the Cosmonaut Corps and was commissioned as an officer after completing her training. After the dissolution of the first group of female cosmonauts in 1969, Tereshkova remained in the space programme as a cosmonaut instructor. She later graduated from the Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy and re-qualified for spaceflight, but never went to space again. She retired from the Air Force in 1997 she attained the rank of major general.
Tereshkova was a prominent member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, holding various political offices including being a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet from 1974 to 1989. She remained politically active following the collapse of the Soviet Union but twice lost elections to the national State Duma in 1995 and 2003. Tereshkova was later elected in 2008 to her regional parliament, the Yaroslavl Oblast Duma. In 2011, she was elected to the national State Duma as a member of the ruling United Russia party and was re-elected in 2016 and 2023
Tereshkova has the federal state civilian service rank of 1st class Active State Councillor of the Russian Federation. In 2022, she voted for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which led to numerous international sanctions against her.
During the drafting process for the 2020 amendments to the Constitution of Russia, she proposed to lift the term limits for president Putin.
Valentina Tereshkova was born on 6 March 1937 in the Bolshoye Maslennikovo, a village on the Volga River 270 kilometres (170 mi) northeast of Moscow and part of the Yaroslavl Oblast in central Russia. Her parents had migrated from Belarus. Her father, Vladimir Tereshkov, was a former tractor driver and a sergeant in command of a tank in the Soviet Army. He died in the Finnish Winter War when Tereshkova was two years of age. He and her mother Elena Fyodorovna Tereshkova had three children. After her father's death, her mother moved the family to Yaroslavl, seeking better employment opportunities, and was employed at the Krasny Perekop cotton mill.
Tereshkova was first enrolled in school at 8 years old and graduated at 16. She began working at a tire factory, and later at a textile mill, but continued her education by taking correspondence courses and graduated from the Light Industry Technical School in 1960. Tereshkova also became interested from a young age in parachuting, and trained in skydiving at the local Aeroclub, making her first jump at age 22, on 21 May 1959. While still employed as a textile worker, she trained as a competitive parachutist, keeping this a secret from her family. Tereshkova also joined the local Komsomol (Communist Youth League) in Yaroslavl, serving as the secretary of the organisation in 1960 and 1961. She became a member of the Communist Party in 1962.
Tereshkova had not expressed any particular desire to go into space before being recruited. Rather, her experience at skydiving contributed to her selection as a cosmonaut. After the flight of Yuri Gagarin in 1961, Nikolai Kamanin, director of cosmonaut training, read in the American media that female pilots were training to be astronauts as part of Mercury 13. In his diary, he wrote, "We cannot allow that the first woman in space will be American. This would be an insult to the patriotic feelings of Soviet women." Approval was granted to place five female cosmonauts in the next group, which would begin training in 1963. To increase the odds of sending a Soviet woman into space first, the female cosmonauts began their training before the men. The rules required that the potential cosmonaut be a parachutist under 30 years of age, less than 170 cm (5 ft 7 in) in height, and no more than 70 kg (154 lb) in weight. By January 1962, the All-Union Voluntary Society for Assistance to the Army, Air Force and Navy (DOSAAF) had selected 400 candidates for consideration. After the initial screening, 58 of those candidates met the requirements, which Kamanin reduced to 23. On 16 February 1962, Tereshkova was selected, along with four other candidates, to join the female cosmonaut corps.
Since they had no military experience, they started with the rank of private in the Soviet Air Forces. Training included isolation tests, centrifuge tests, thermo-chamber tests, decompression chamber testing, and pilot training in MiG-15UTI jet fighters. Tereshkova underwent water recovery training at sea, as part of which several motorboats were used to agitate the water, in order to simulate the rough conditions of space travel. She also began studying at the Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy and graduated a few years after her flight. The group spent several months in basic training and, after they finished their training and passed an examination, Kamanin offered them the option to be commissioned as regular Air Force officers. With advice from the male cosmonauts, they chose to accept Kamanin's offer, as it would make it harder for the programme to get rid of them after the first flight. All five women became junior lieutenants in the Air Force in December 1962. Tatyana Kuznetsova became ineligible for the first flight due to illness, and Zhanna Yorkina was performing poorly in training, leaving Tereshkova, Irina Solovyova, and Valentina Ponomaryova as the leading candidates.
Originally, a joint mission profile was developed that would involve launching two women into space, on solo Vostok flights, on consecutive days in March or April 1963. It was intended that Tereshkova would launch first, in Vostok 5, while Ponomaryova would follow her into orbit in Vostok 6. However, this flight plan was altered in March 1963. Vostok 5 would now carry a male cosmonaut, Valery Bykovsky, flying alongside a woman aboard Vostok 6, both to be launched in June 1963. The State Space Commission, at their meeting on 21 May, nominated Tereshkova to pilot Vostok 6. Kamanin called her "Gagarin in a skirt." Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev was happy with the propaganda potential of her selection, since she was the daughter of a collective farm worker who had died in the Winter War; he confirmed her selection. Solovyova was appointed as her first backup. Tereshkova was promoted to lieutenant before her flight and to captain mid-flight.
After the successful launch of Vostok 5 on 14 June, Tereshkova began final preparations for her own flight. On the morning of 16 June 1963, Tereshkova and her backup Solovyova were both dressed in spacesuits and taken to the launch pad by bus. Following the tradition set by Gagarin, Tereshkova also urinated on the bus tire, becoming the first woman to do so. After completing her communication- and life-support checks, she was sealed inside the Vostok. After a two-hour countdown, Vostok 6 launched faultlessly, and Tereshkova became the first woman in space; she remains the only woman to have flown into space solo, and, at 26 years of age, the youngest. Her call sign on this flight was Chaika. In commemoration, this name was later bestowed on an asteroid, 1671 Chaika. After her launch, she radioed down:
It is I, Seagull! Everything is fine. I see the horizon; it's a sky blue with a dark strip. How beautiful the Earth is ... everything is going well.
Vostok 6 was the final Vostok flight and was launched two days after Vostok 5 which carried Bykovsky into a five-day mission. The two vessels spent three days in orbital planes 30° apart and, during Tereshkova's first orbit, approached each other to within 5 km (3.1 mi). Although they were able to communicate by radio, neither could be sure if they saw each other. Cameras placed inside both the spacecraft transmitted live footage that was broadcast on Soviet state television. Tereshkova also maintained a flight log and took photographs of the horizon, which were later used to identify aerosol layers within the atmosphere.