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"They forbade me from flying, despite all my protests and arguments." - Valentina Tereshkova
Early life and education
Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova was born on March 6th, 1937. Her father, Vladimir Tereshkova was a sergeant in the Soviet Army and died during the Finnish Winter War when Valentina was 2 years old. Following his death, her mother moved to Yaroslavl with her three children, seeking better employment and started working at a cotton mill.
At the age of 10, Tereshkova started school and graduated at the age of 17. After her graduation from Light Industry Technical School, she became interested in parachuting and started skydiving. While working as a textile worker, she was a competitive parachutist.
Career
Previously, she hadn't had any desire to go to space. Tereshkova's love and experience for parachuting contributed to the selection as a cosmonaut. Nikolai Kamanin had read in American media that they were training female astronauts and he couldn't allow the first woman in space to be an american. From there, Tereshkova was one of the five female cosmonauts to begin training. To increase the chances of a first female in space, the Soviet Union began training females before males.
Since Tereshkova didn't have any military training, she started in the Soviet Air Forces as a private. The training she underwent to travel to space included isolation tests, centrifuge tests, thermo-chamber tests, decompression chamber tests and at last, pilot training in a MiG-15UTI jet fighter. After passing months of training the group were promoted to junior lieutenants. Due to outside circumstances, Tereshkova and two other females were in the lead to fly up to space. At first, Tereshkova was planned to launch with Vostok 5, but was changed to carry a male and Tereshkova would launch shortly after in Vostok 6.
After her success as a cosmonaut, Tereshkova became a national and international role model. She was a well known Soviet Union representative abroad and became a member of the World Peace Council and represented the Soviet Union at a UN conference.
Tereshkova was chosen for several political positions and was a member of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, Central Committee of the Communist Party and Presidium of the Supreme Soviet for periods during 1966-91. Even though she wanted to pursue a career as cosmonaut and engineer, she didn't have the choice in 1968 as the Soviet didn't want to risk losing a hero and was forced into politics.
During her political career, she underwent medical examinations to qualify for a spaceflight again, but didn't go to space and remained as an instructor at Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut training Centre. She remained active in politics after the collapse of the Soviet Union and active with the Russian Air Force until she reached the compulsory age of retirement in 1997 . She ran multiple times for a seat in the state Duma, and a year before she was elected, she was invited to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's residence to celebrate her 70th birthday. Here, she stated she wanted to fly to Mars, even if it meant that it would be a one-way trip.
