An Age That Has Passed: First Female Cosmonaut Laments End of Space Exploration Era and Gagarin
Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, celebrates the 55th anniversary of the spaceflight. Vladimir Putin congratulated her on the remarkable date. Tereshkova's flight lasted almost 72 hours. She is the only woman, who has flown in space alone. A museum, dedicated to her flight, was opened in her birthplace in the Yaroslavsky region.
Our correspondent, Ekaterina Mironova, met Valentina Vladimirovna in the Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics in Moscow.
Valentina Tereshkova: "I can even hug it".
Valentina Tereshkova herself gave an emotional tour around the Museum of Cosmonautics. It seems she has something to say about every exhibited object.
Valentina Tereshkova: "A spacesuit is a house. An autonomous house, if something happens on the ship, the spacesuit saves lives".
The visitors of the museum don't leave her alone: photos, questions. It's not only Russians who are interested in it: Valentina Tereshkova is a woman of the Planet.
"I'm really happy to see her in person; she opened the doors into space for all humanity. I heard a lot about her when I was a child. It's so great to meet her, so unexpected".
In the lecture hall, Valentina Tereshkova gives detailed answers to questions by the young specialists of the Russian cosmic industry about the spacesuits, the moon program, and the very flight. It seems like the new-coming engineers are interested in every detail.
— When you decided to become an astronaut, what happened in your mind? Something clicked or what?
Valentina Tereshkova: You can't imagine what was going on in the country. We all wanted to be like Yuriy Gagarin. With his smile, his flight, he conquered the love of everybody, who lived in the Soviet Union. So I became a paratrooper, I had to start with something.
She made over 90 parachute jumps. A young woman from the Yaroslavsky region, who then was a worker of a textile mill, was noticed and asked to pass a panel, allegedly to operate some kind of a modern vehicle. She has been preparing for a flight into the unknown for over a year.
On the 16 of June 1963, Outer Space was no longer only for men. Valentina Tereshkova, call sign "Chaika", on the "Vostok-6" ship made 48 revolutions around the Earth, almost 72 hours on the orbit.
"I'm "Chaika". All the ship's system function perfectly. General state is perfect.
The first woman to be in space is often questioned about her health during the flight, that Tereshkova, allegedly, felt queasy. Valentina Vladimirovna calls those stories fables because she managed to detect a system failure on the orbit. A sick person wouldn't have managed.
Valentina Tereshkova: "They sent me new data, I filled it in and I landed successfully. If a cosmonaut was in such a condition you are talking about, he wouldn't probably have detected this grave, serious mistake and he wouldn't probably have landed".
Valentina Tereshkova confesses that she still sees this flight in her dreams, in details: how she looked at the dearly beloved Volga River, how she saw the unknown Australia. She has been dreaming to repeat the journey for the whole 55 years and even now.
Valentina Tereshkova: “When Gagarin died, I was told: We lost Gagarin. Leave your idea alone. But it's wonderful, all this experience, some certain knowledge. Of course, I'd like to fly once again. But I understand, that there's an age when... Though I can!”
Ekaterina Mironova, Andrey Rozanov, Alexander Fadeev, Vesti.