Answer to Intuitive Skills Development #1…who was she…

Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova (Russian: Валенти́на Влади́мировна Терешко́ва, IPA: [vɐlʲɪnʲˈtʲinə vlɐˈdʲimʲɪrəvnə tʲɪrʲɪʂˈkovə] born 6 March 1937) is a retired Russian cosmonaut, engineer, and politician. She is the first woman to have flown in space, having been selected from more than 400 applicants and five finalists to pilot Vostok 6on 16 June 1963. She completed 48 orbits of the Earth in her three days in space.

In order to join the Cosmonaut Corps, Tereshkova was honorarily inducted into the Soviet Air Force and thus she also became the first civilian to fly in space.[1]

Before her recruitment as a cosmonaut, Tereshkova was a textile-factory assembly worker and an amateur skydiver. After the dissolution of the first group of female cosmonauts in 1969, she became a prominent member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, holding various political offices. She remained politically active following the collapse of the Soviet Union and is still regarded as a hero in post-Soviet Russia.

In 2013, she offered to go on a one-way trip to Mars if the opportunity arose.[2] At the opening ceremony of the 2014 Winter Olympics, she was a carrier of the Olympic flag.

Tereshkova was born in the village of Maslennikovoin Tutayevsky District, Yaroslavl Oblast, in central Russia. Her parents had migrated from Belarus.[3]Tereshkova’s father was a tractor driver and her mother worked in a textile plant. Tereshkova went to school in 1945 at the age 8; however, she left school in 1953 and continued her education by correspondence courses.[4]

She became interested in parachuting from a young age, and trained in skydiving at the local Aeroclub, making her first jump at age 22 on 21 May 1959; at the time, she was employed as a textile worker in a local factory. It was her expertise in skydiving that led to her selection as a cosmonaut. In 1961, she became Secretary of the local Komsomol (Young Communist League) and later joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.[5]

Tereschkova married Andriyan Nikolayev on 3 November 1963 at the Moscow Wedding Palace with Khrushchev presiding at the wedding party together with top government and space programme leaders.[21]

On 8 June 1964, she gave birth to their daughter Elena Andrianovna Nikolaeva-Tereshkova,[22] who became a doctor and was the first person to have both a mother and father who had travelled into space. She and Nikolayev divorced in 1982. Her second husband, the orthopaedist Yuliy G. Shaposhnikov, died in 1999.

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With love xxx