Vladimirovna Tereshkova was born in 1937 near Moscow, Russia in a village on the Volga river.

She wasn’t enrolled in school until the age of 10 and graduated at 17. Her life was uneventful for many years, as she worked mundane jobs at a tire factory and a textile mill, but she continued her education through correspondence courses.

She became interested in skydiving, making her first jump at 22 years of age, and became a competitive parachutist without her family’s knowledge, as she knew they would disapprove.

She joined the communist party in 1962.

Her interest in parachuting was what facilitated her being chosen for cosmonaut training. The director, Nikolai Kamanin, had read that American’s were training female pilots to be astronauts, so he put his efforts into Russia being the country to send the first woman into orbit. Valentina was selected along with four other females to join the cosmonaut corps.

After extensive training, Valentina prepared for her launch on the morning of June 16, 1963. Her call sign for the flight was Chaika, which in English translates to Seagull. After a two-hour countdown, spacecraft Vostok 6 successfully launched the first female into space, with a male, Valery Vykovsky, as her co-pilot. This made her not only the first female to fly into space, but at 26 years old, she was also the youngest.

Valentina’s first communication to earth conveyed her calm and awe at what she was seeing when she radioed back to earth, ‘It is I, Seagull. Everything is fine….I see the horizon; it’s sky blue with a dark strip. How beautiful earth is…everything is going well.’

On future flights, Valentina was experienced enough to fly solo.

Valentina Tereshkova is alive and currently living in Russia. To this day she remains the first and only female to fly solo in space.