Valentina Tereshkova celebrates Her 78th Birthday

She flew into space for on 16th of June, 1963.

06.Mar.15 2:17 PM
By Nataliya Klyachina
Photo Toinnov.com

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Today Valentina Tereshkova celebrates her 78th birthday. She is a national Russian hero. As well as all other girls of her age, she went to school but was faced to start working in the early age on Yaroslavl Tire Plant in order to provide her family with financial support.

Since 1959 she started to go info skydiving. Later in 1962 Tereshkova was among those who were eager to fly into space. She took part in competition with lots of others. This was a part of a space program arranged by the head of rocket and space technology and Soviet missile weapon production Sergey Korolev. He was inspired by first flights into space made by men. Tereshkova has successfully passed all necessary tests and examinations. She was included in the squad of astronauts. Valentina completed her first flight into space at the age of 16 in 1963. She kept this fact in secret from her family and relatives. They found out about her success from radio program. Tereshkova was assigned “Seagull” call sign. The flight lasted for three days. She felt extremely bad during her space travelling due to nausea and physical discomfort. When they finally landed, Valentina said that none Russian woman will ever fly into space again till she is alive. Such flights are extremely hard and dangerous for health.

Tereshkova is the first woman-astronaut in the world. At the same time she is the only woman who completed independent flight into space. She was named a Hero of the Soviet Union and in 1995 she was the first woman ever who got the rank of Major General.

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