Jun 16 2009
First Woman in Space
The first woman travels to space on this day in history! June 16, 1963, the first woman to travel into space a Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova as she traveled aboard Vostak 6. Her enthusiasm for skydiving brought her the attention of the Soviet space program, which sought to put a woman in space in the early 1960s as a means of beating the United States to another space first.
Tereshkova orbited the planet 48 times in three days, during which Soviet premier Nikta Khuscheve spoke to her by radio. As an accomplished parachutist, Terashkova was well equipped to handle on of the most challenging procedures of a Vostak space flight; the mandatory ejection from the capsule at 20,000 feet during rentry.
