50 Year Anniversary Of First Woman In Space

Victoria Loguinova-Yakovleva’s article in The China Post marks the 50 year anniversary of Valentina Terehkova’s historic flight:

On June 16, 1963, Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to fly into space…She remains the only woman ever to have made a solo space flight.

In April 1962, officials narrowed down the candidates for the flight to five. In a top-secret process, they picked two engineers, one school teacher, one typist and one factory worker who had performed 90 parachute jumps: this was Tereshkova.

After seven months of intensive training, they chose Tereshkova, who grew up in a peasant family and was a Communist Youth (Komsomol) leader at her textile factory in the historic city of Yaroslavl, around 280 kilometers (174 miles) from Moscow.

During her three-day mission, Tereshkova circled Earth 48 times. On the first day, she communicated with Bykovsky and even sang him songs. Their communication was then interrupted as the two spaceships moved further away from each other.

You can find the entire article here