The first woman in space: unknown facts about the flight of Valentina Tereshkova

Exactly 58 years ago, Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman, went into space. We want to remember her remarkable space expedition.

The dream of visiting space has not left humanity for centuries. On April 12, 1961, it was destined to be fulfilled — Yuri Gagarin made the first flight. After the successful flights of Soviet cosmonauts, Sergei Korolev had the idea to launch a female cosmonaut into space. She became Valentina Tereshkova, having made a flight into space on June 16, 1963 on the Vostok-6 spacecraft.

Medical examination of Valentina Tereshkova.

The first space flights took place in a highly competitive environment. Both superpowers worked hard to ensure that their ships sailed the expanses of the universe. But, as you know, the palm in this matter belonged to the Soviet Union. After the debut "male" flight, the Americans had only one trump card left — to prepare a "female" flight. But even here the Soviet cosmonauts were ahead of them. As soon as the Country of the Soviets received information about the preparation of the American "women's team", Nikita Khrushchev personally insisted that a competitive selection be held among the Soviet women as well.

There were quite a few contenders for the role of the woman who will be the first to visit space. Such a scale would be the envy of any modern beauty pageants: out of 800 contestants, 30 reached the "final". They began to prepare them for a decisive flight. In the process of preparation, the top five candidates were selected, and Valentina Tereshkova was by no means the first in this rating. According to medical indicators, she was in the last place at all.

The girls passed difficult tests: they were placed in extremely high temperatures and in rooms with high humidity, they had to try themselves in zero gravity and learn to land on water by jumping with a parachute (training was needed for landing during the landing of the spacecraft).

Psychological tests were also conducted: it was important to understand how comfortable women would be during their stay in space (by the way, Tereshkova's experience was unique in that she was in space for almost three days alone, all later flights were made by a duo).

The decision about who would go into space was made personally by Khrushchev. The story of Valentina Tereshkova perfectly suited the ideal of a "girl from the people", who achieved everything by her own work. Valentina had a simple family, she was born in the village and worked in a weaving factory, she never skydived professionally, in total she had less than 100 jumps to her credit. In short, the heroine of the people fully corresponded to the desired ideal.

The launch of the Tereshkova ship took place on June 16, 1963. She made a flight on the ship "Vostok-6". Valentina Tereshkova can rightly be called a heroine, since during the flight she faced a huge number of difficulties, but she survived all the trials with dignity.

The main problem was poor health: nausea, lethargy, drowsiness-all this had to be fought. It was even recorded that Valentina stopped responding to requests from Earth: it turned out that she simply fell asleep from overwork. Only Valery Bykovsky, another Soviet cosmonaut who was in orbit at the time, was able to wake her up. There was an internal connection between their ships, through which the astronauts could communicate.

On the podium of the Mausoleum on June 22, 1963.

However, the most terrible test, about which the official authorities were silent for a long time, was a malfunction in the mechanism of Tereshkova's ship. Instead of landing on Earth, she risked flying off into space and dying. Miraculously, Gagarin, who was watching the flight, managed to figure out how to fix the situation, and Valentina Tereshkova was still able to return.

Yuri Gagarin and Valentina Tereshkova.

Landing in the Altai Territory was not easy. The exhausted woman-cosmonaut literally fell on the head of local residents. Tired and exhausted, she happily changed into the clothes that had been brought to her, exposing her body, which had turned into a solid hematoma from the spacesuit, and also tasted peasant food-potatoes, kvass and bread. For this, she later received a reprimand from Sergei Korolev himself, because by doing so, she violated the purity of the experiment.

For many years after the flight of Valentina Tereshkova, Soviet women did not go up into space — too many difficulties arose in flight due to the "individual characteristics of the female body". But the name of the first Soviet female cosmonaut is forever inscribed in world history!