๐๐ฎ๐ฝ๐ฝ๐ ๐ฉ๐ฎ๐น๐ฒ๐ป๐๐ถ๐ป๐ฎ’๐ ๐๐ฎ๐! ๐ ๐ฉโ๐ ๐ซ
Today is the 57th anniversary of the first woman in space โ Russia’s Valentina Tereshkova on Vostok 6, a scary bullet of a capsule that could not make a soft landing, necessitating a ejection from the capsule during reentry. She was 26 at the time and an amateur skydiver. She is the youngest female astronaut and the only woman to fly solo. I thought I’d share a small item I have from her astronaut days.
After the flight of Yuri Gagarin in 1961, Nikolai Kamanin, director of cosmonaut training, read in American media that female pilots were training to be astronauts. 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 for 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 males.
With a single flight, she logged more flight time than the combined times of all American astronauts who had flown before that date.
Her call sign in this flight was Chaika (Russian: ะงะฐฬะนะบะฐ, or ‘Seagull’), later commemorated as the name of an asteroid, 1671 Chaika. After her launch, she radioed down:
๐ผ๐ก ๐๐ ๐ผ, ๐๐๐๐๐ข๐๐. ๐ธ๐ฃ๐๐๐ฆ๐กโ๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐. ๐ผ ๐ ๐๐ ๐กโ๐ โ๐๐๐๐ง๐๐; ๐๐ก’๐ ๐ ๐ ๐๐ฆ ๐๐๐ข๐ ๐ค๐๐กโ ๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐ ๐ก๐๐๐. ๐ป๐๐ค ๐๐๐๐ข๐ก๐๐๐ข๐ ๐กโ๐ ๐ธ๐๐๐กโ ๐๐ .
โ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentina_Tereshkova
As planned in all Vostok missions, Tereshkova ejected from the capsule during its descent at about four miles above Kazakhstan and made a parachute landing, quite a thrill ride for this skydiver!
She had dinner with some local villagers in the Altai Krai who helped her to get out of her spacesuit.
Her flight became Cold War propaganda to demonstrate the superiority of communism. At the 1963 World Congress of Women, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev used Tereshkova’s voyage to declare the USSR had achieved equality for women.
To date, only 12% of astronauts have been women, despite being arguably better suited for the job.
That should change: https://phys.org/news/2020-06-astronauts-men-future-space-female.html
I bought her Astronomic Angle Measuring Device in France from Tereshkovaโs instructor at the Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy. His translated description: “This is an angle measuring device of the Russian aerospace for astronomic navigation, especially for calculation of flight angles. It was personally used by the Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova. It consists of a turning wheel that is marked with degree values. Once the zero point on the scale is adjusted to a certain height, the orbsโ and targetsโ location can be measured.”
Part of the space collection at work: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/albums/72157623704246792
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