Fifty years ago in June 1963, a female voice came from a distant yet no longer inaccessible outer space for the first time in history. Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova reported back to Earth from her spacecraft: “I am Chaika / Seagull/! All OK onboard!”
It was a rule to report that everything was OK. In reality the profession of a cosmonaut was one of the most dangerous. Now we know that crewmembers of the first Vostok spacecraft were bumped and roughed and the flight was clearly not a picnic. Valentina also experienced it all. There is documentary evidence it was an ordeal for her in extreme conditions. The mission of a cosmonaut is not just a flight, it includes many months of training, risk, and often damaged health. Tereshkova herself disclosed it when asked about the impact of the space flight on the health of the pilot.
— Cosmonauts have vulnerable heart, vascular system, and head, she said.
She experienced it herself. Valentina Tereshkova does not conceal that she wanted to fly to space again, but doctors did not allow. Which path did she have to traverse towards the first female flight to space in the history of mankind? It lasted 72 hours and her Vostok-6 spacecraft circled the Earth 48 times. Why was she chosen? To comprehend it we have to recollect the times when Soviet space research rapidly developed with all accompanying specifics.
Unusual person in unusual time
There were no grounds to suggest that Valentina would become the first female cosmonaut in the world. She was born before the war in a small village in Yaroslavl region. Her father was a tractor operator and her mother worked in a textile factory. The social origin was an important factor for the national leadership in choosing a woman to become the first in space. However there was a tragic page in family history which could bar Valentina from the flight. In 1939 her father was recruited to the army and went missing during the Soviet- Finnish war. He was most likely killed, but officially remained missing which always triggered suspicion of Soviet authorities about possible defection.
Valentina studied seven years in school and had to go to work. She was hired by the Yaroslavl tire factory and continued studies in an evening school. Later she was employed by the Yaroslavl textile factory called Krasny Perekop. She continued to work and entered a vocational light industry school. In five years the energetic girl was noticed by the management of the factory and assigned to head the grass-root committee of the Young Communist League.
It is also important that Valentina was fond of sky-jumping and spent a lot of free time at the airfield. Her working class origin, public activities and parachuting skills helped Tereshkova get enlisted into the team of cosmonauts in March 1962.
She was assigned the rank of a private and training began. It lasted several months and was exhausting. There were several obligatory exercises which show the strain – heat chamber where she had to stay in her flying uniform at temperature of +70 degrees Centigrade and 30% humidity, and anechoic room which was completely soundproof and where she had to stay for ten days running. Training in weightlessness was carried out on MiG-15 fighter jets. While doing acrobatic maneuvers – parabolic turn – zero gravity developed inside the aircraft for 40 seconds and she had to experience it 3-4 times during one flight. Besides, in weightlessness she had to write down her name, try to eat or communicate through a radio set.
After the successful landing of Tereshkova Soviet space leaders agreed that Khrushchev made a lucky choice.
After several months of physical and psychological load Tereshkova passed exams and in December 1962 was promoted to the rank of junior lieutenant. Time to the historic flight began to run at a space speed. On June16, 1963 the Liftoff command w as issued.
The story could have been different as Tereshkova was only the fifth in the list of would-be cosmonauts by her medical test results. However Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev interfered. He studied the biographies of the candidates and made a ruling with no right to appeal: Tereshkova will fly. Her working class origin helped as other girls were born into families of clerks. Designer General Sergei Korolev and Academician Mstislav Keldysh had to agree.
How did other girls react? Tereshkova said many years after the flight that they were very upset. She would have been also upset if another candidate had been chosen.
— It would be a pity for me to sit in a spacesuit in a bus and see another girl go to the spacecraft. We all passed the difficult flight preparation stages. But we preserved our friendship. At the space base they called us “top secret girls” as training itself was top secret. Accredited journalists even composed a song: Our town is small and top secret girls comprise a minority in it. After the successful landing of Tereshkova Soviet space leaders agreed that Khrushchev made a lucky choice as Valentina behaved impeccably in difficult flight conditions. Lieutenant-General Nikolai Kamanin was in charge of selecting and training cosmonauts. That is what he said: Preparation of the rocket, spacecraft and all other operations went very smoothly. By perfect and coherent performance of all services and systems Tereshkova’s liftoff reminds me of Gagarin’s flight. Like on April 12, 1961, the blastoff on June 16, 1963 was perfect. Everybody who saw Tereshkova at the launching pad and listened to her reports on the way to the orbit unanimously agreed: “She blasted off better than Popovich and Nikolayev did”. I am very happy that the choice of the first female cosmonaut was correct.
Everything is OK onboard
The phrase which Tereshkova transmitted from her Vostok-6 to the whole world was evasive and only the mission control knew the truth. What did the first woman encounter in space? That is what she said:
— There was a mistake in the automatic program of the spacecraft. Instead of descending it climbed the orbit. I did not come closer to the Earth with each circle, but distanced from it. They reported it to Korolev. On the second day they booted new data into the system and the orbit improved. Korolev asked me not to tell anyone about it and I kept silent for dozens of years. Later it was reported in the press and now I can disclose it. Major-General Nikolai Kamanin also did not conceal the truth in his memoirs. That is what he wrote about the flight:
— It was clear she was tired but refused to admit it. During the last radio session she did not answer our calls. We switched on TV camera and saw her sleeping. We had to wake her up and tell her about upcoming landing and manual orbit change. She tried twice to orient the spacecraft and honestly admitted she failed to adjust correct pitching. We were very concerned because in case of manual landing she would be incapable of orienting the spacecraft and it would not leave the orbit. She said the polarity of commands was opposite to the movement of the joystick in manual regime (the spacecraft turned to a different side in contrast to stimulator flight). In the automatic regime the polarity was correct and we succeeded to properly orient and land the spacecraft.
Landing in Baev district of Altai region 620 kilometers north-east of Karaganda gave Tereshkova a nervous breakdown. Decades later she remembers the event as if it happened only yesterday:
— When I ejected I experienced muted horror as there was a lake below. The first thought was: God, they send a female and she has to splash down! Will she have enough strength to stay on water after an exhausting flight? But I was lucky as I flew over the lake. There was strong wind at the earth surface and it pulled my huge parachute. . .
The first flight of a woman in space ended with the first reprimand to her for a curious reason. The military bureaucrats disciplined her for breaching the regime in the landing area. In comprehensible language it means that when Tereshkova saw numerous people running to her she handed out all her space food stock and in exchange was treated to local dishes which were earthly and incredibly tasty for her .
Besides the reprimand, Valentina recollects pleasant things as well: before the liftoff of the Vostok she was promoted to the rank of a lieutenant and right after landing received the rank of a captain. Several days later on June 22, 1963 Valentina Tereshkova was awarded the top title of the Hero of the Soviet Union.
This was the end of the flight in which everything was OK.
The consequences of the space flight will for long affect the future life of Valentina Tereshkova. Mostly her health. Expert in postflight adaptation of cosmonauts Dr. Vitaly Volovich believes female organism is unfit for zerogravity.
Male body recovers calcium in 10-12 days while Tereshkova could not stand on her feet for a month. Penetrating space rays had a different impact on the woman. Her bones became fragile and could break under any load, bleeding often occurred. Volovich said Tereshkova will for all her life face the danger of breaking a leg at the drop of a hat or bleed to death from a small wound. Luckily, doctors succeeded to cure the problems with time and Valentina Tereshkova began to live an ordinary earthly life. However it was not very ordinary.
After the flight
After triumphant welcome in Moscow Tereshkova was asked what she would desire most of all. She said she wanted to find the grave of her father. They fulfilled her request although it was not easy to find the common grave where her father w as buried two decades after the war.
Even prim Britons awarded her the title of the Greatest Woman of the XX Century.
Another important event took place in November 1963: Tereshkova married cosmonaut Andrian Nikolayev. There are different stories about the space marriage. There are claims that Nikita Khrushchev insisted on it as he thought the space couple will bring respect and love to the Soviet Union across the globe. Others say Nikolayev was the only single cosmonaut who courted Tereshkova from the first day she came to the team of cosmonauts.
General Nikolai Kamynin wrote in his diary at the time: “Their marriage can be fruitful for politics and science, but I am not sure it would be long as they are very different: she is fire and he is water. They are both strong and determined people, neither of them would voluntarily surrender to the other . . .”
Anyway, the Soviet leader personally attended the wedding ceremony in the government reception house in Lenin Hills and in June 1964 daughter Yelena was born. They stayed together but each lived his own life: Nikolayev was preparing for new flights while Tereshkova was bringing up her daughter and actively engaged in public life. The marriage quickly cracked, as General Kamynin predicted. For the time being they did not tell anyone about deteriorating relationship. They divorced only when daughter Yelena reached full legal age.That is how Yelena recalls it:
— The father and mother divorced when I was 18. Naturally, I was upset but I was grownup enough to comprehend their decision.
They claim Tereshkova had to request permission to divorce from Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. She was stubborn enough and managed to convince Brezhnev that the space marriage was no longer necessary. Besides, Valentina found another big love.
She first met Doctor Yuly Shaposhnikov in 1978 when she underwent medical tests in order to be enlisted to a new team of cosmonauts. Shaposhnikov worked in the Medical Military Academy and was in the team of doctors who checked candidates to the team of cosmonauts. They married several years after Tereshkova divorced and lived together for twenty years up to the demise of the husband.
Awards, titles, decorations
It is not an easy task to list all awards of Valentina Tereshkova as they are numerous and come from various countries. Streets were named after her and she is an honorable resident of a huge number of cities practically on all continents. Even prim Britons awarded her the title of the Greatest Woman of the XX Century .
Her space awards comprise a separate file: a Moon crater was named after Tereshkova and a small planet is called 1671 Chaika. There are many commemorative places in her native region: school #32 in Yaroslavl where she studied is now named after Valentina Tereshkova. There is also the Space museum named after her and located several kilometers from her native village. The latest present has been received by Tereshkova only recently: right at a session of the State Duma in 2013 she was presented with a splinter of the famous “Chelyabinsk meteorite”.
However the main award for Tereshkova is her daughter Yelena and grandsons Alexei and Andrei.
She achieved everything what a woman can dream of: there was love, there is a child, and a lot of interesting work. She is a self-made woman and the corresponding popular American saying is about her. Valentina received higher education after the flight and headed numerous public associations, including the Committee of Soviet Women and the Russian Center for International Scientific and Cultural Cooperation. She is the first woman in Russia to receive the rank of a general. Today Tereshkova is a lawmaker in the Russian State Duma from United Russia party .
There are films about her and songs composed by popular rock bands from Norway, Poland, England, Italy, and the Netherlands. In Russia I remember a song performed by a band of her fellow-countrymen called Yaroslavl Guys who often appeared on TV: Valentina, tell us, why did you undermine our male dominance? She was the first to fly into space from her native region. However the main award for Tereshkova is her daughter Yelena and grandsons Alexei and Andrei. What else can an earthly woman dream of? However there is still a dream which, alas, will not come true.
There are no former cosmonauts
It is clear that her age will not allow her another space flight. However she often dreams of flying again. Valentina Tereshkova explains:
— I was crazy about my work. A flight is like a disease. You need to skydive. It demands better knowledge, skills and responsibilities. There were many candidates, but I was selected. That means you have to do it no matter what. You have to die but do it. Would I like to fly to space again? Yes, without hesitation. It is a dream of everyone who has been in space. I dream of the flight. Sometimes I see all details which I did not notice before. However my dream is impossible. Had I had much money I would become a space tourist. Where would I like to fly? There is an exciting and mysterious planet called Mars. We dreamt about it together with Sergei Korolev decades ago. I am ready to go there even with no return. . .
Andrei Karavaev,
for Amber Bridge