Valentina Vladimirovna was born in Maslennikovo, a small town in Yaroslav Oblast, Russia the March 6, 1937. His family was humble and of few resources. His father died in 1940 in the bell of Finland.
Valentina’s mother was left a widow at the age of 27 and had to raise her three children alone. They moved to the city of Yaroslavl on the banks of the Volga, where their mother and older sister worked in a textile factory.
Was the first woman in history, cosmonaut, who flew into space aboard the Vostok 6 in 1963.
He dropped out of school due to family reasons and started working in a tire factory, but continued to high school at night. He liked it a lot skydiving in an amateur air club and later, I study engineering.
In December 1961, a commission that toured the clubs to select paratroopers and then they were preparing them to do space flights, he selected her despite being very young and not having enough experience.
The search for paratroopers was due to the fact that the Vostok ships did not have devices to land. When the highest and least dense layers of the atmosphere were crossed, the cosmonaut was injected from the capsule with his seat with a device, when he was 10 km from the ground and finished the descent by parachute.
In 1962, Valentina was selected to enter the female body of cosmonauts. There were more than 400 candidates and only five were selected, remaining among them Tatiana Kuznetsova, Zhanna Yerkina , Irina Soloviova , Valentina Ponomariova and Tereshkova.
When she was 26 years old, on June 16, 1963, Valentina became the first woman to travel to space, aboard the Vostok 6. Her code name for the mission was Chaika, which in Spanish means Gaviota.
But Sergei Korolyov he was unhappy with Tereshkova’s behavior in orbit and therefore refused to take manual control of the spacecraft as planned. More flights involving women had been planned, but none took place until 19 years later, where another woman, Svetlana Savitskaya, could reach space.
Of those who were selected in Valentina’s group, none managed to travel to space.
On November 3, 1963, she married the also cosmonaut Andrian Nikolayev and a year later his only daughter named Elena, who is currently a medical doctor, would be born.
Due to various problems, Valentina and her husband divorced in 1982 and years later she remarried him Dr. Shaposhnikov, who passed away in 1999. Some time after the space mission, Valentina studied at the Zhukovski Air Force Academy and obtained the title of space engineer in 1969. That same year, the group of cosmonauts of women was dissolved.
By 1977 he managed to obtain the PhD in engineering and due to his great talent and prominence he was able to stand out in various political positions. From 1966 to 1974 he was a member of the Supreme Soviet, then from 1974 to 1989 he became part of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet and, from 1969 to 1991, he was part of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.
In 1997, Valentina decided to retire from the air force and the body of cosmonauts.
At present this valuable woman maintains a lot of discretion when it comes to her private life, continues to show resistance and tenacity to her hard work as an advocate for the feminist cause and promoting Russia as a country rich in history and with enormous cultural and scientific heritage.