My Fake Band

The United States might have put a man on the moon first, but it was the Russians who first sent a woman to space. The Vintage Space star and author Amy Shira Teitel joins the geeks this week on a supporters-only livestream recording session and Q&A about Valentina Tereshkova, a woman 20 years ahead of her US counterparts.

Russia won the female space race 57 years ago by G&B Senior Segment Producer Amber Healy

From the early days of the space race, research supported the idea of women serving as astronauts and cosmonauts. Women tend to have smaller bodies in every measurable way, and since spaceflight often has to account for every ounce considering the price of rocket fuel, it just made sense to send lighter, smaller bodies into orbit. But in the 1950s and 1960s, sexism was still king in both the USA and the USSR. So women waited. The first woman in space, on June 16, 1963, was Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova. She was 26 at the time and one of several women recruited into an aggressive cosmonaut training program due to her early enthusiasm and skill for parachute jumping. The effort was backed by Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev, who ordered a small group of women be selected and trained for a women-in-space program.

Fearless female leadership

Let’s not mince words here: Tereshkova was a badass from the word go. She joined a paramilitary flying club without telling her mother, spending her weekends training and completing 90 jumps before she caught the Kremlin’s eye. “I did night jumps, too, on to land and water — the Volga River,” she told The Guardian. “I learned to wait as long as possible before pulling the cord, just to feel the air; 40 seconds, 50 seconds... it’s not really falling; you experience enormous pleasure from the sensation of your whole body. It’s marvellous.” She joined the Communist Party in 1962, as would’ve been customary for the time. The Soviets, of course, sent Yuri Gargarin into space in 1961, but the director of cosmonaut training, Nikolai Kamanin, heard shortly thereafter that the Americans were preparing to train female pilots to be astronauts. Not wanting to be outshined, the Soviets started their program with five women, including Tereshkova, and had their training start before their male counterparts. The rules stipulated that the women had to be a parachutist and under the age of 30, standing less than 170 cm (5 ft 7 in) tall and weigh no more than 70 kg (154 lbs). Of the small class of specially trained women, only Tereshkova went to space, selected to pilot Vostok 6, while cosmonaut Valeri Bykovsky piloted the sister mission on Vostok 5. He launched on June 14; she launched two days later. Over the course of 70 hours in space, they came within 5km (3 miles) of each other while in orbit and exchanged messages. Tereshkova orbited the Earth 48 times, with European and Soviet TV beaming back images of her smiling from space. At the time, both Tereshkova and Bykovsky were record holders: she for being the first woman in space; he for spending more time in space alone than anyone — a record he still holds at just five days.

Hers was not a flawless flight, however. The full details of her stressful journey became apparent when her flight log was released to the public in 2013, including that she failed in her original attempt at manually orienting the spacecraft while in orbit. The vehicle kept listing to one side, with warning lights indicating things were off kilter along all three axes. When she activated manual control, she heard an empty knocking noise. On the second day of her flight, she tried again but was unsuccessful, meaning she couldn’t complete her mission of photographing the Earth from above. It was during her 45th orbit that she successfully completed a breaking maneuver, holding it for 25 minutes. Later, as she was returning into Earth’s atmosphere, she and her vessel had no communic...