Vostok 6
Vostok 6 carried Valentina Tereshkova into orbit on 16 June 1963 — the first woman in space. In under three days she orbited the Earth forty-eight times and landed on 19 June near Barnaul. It was the final flight of the Vostok program.
◉ REÁLNÉ FOTO · Retro Lenses / Wikimedia CommonsContents
living encyclopedia entryostok 6 closed the Soviet Vostok program with one of its strongest propaganda triumphs: it put the very first woman, 27-year-old Valentina Tereshkova, into space. The flight was also a joint one — two days earlier Valery Bykovsky had launched in Vostok 5, and the two spacecraft circled the Earth at the same time.
The Soviet leadership was looking for another "first" after Gagarin and Titov, and the idea of sending a woman into space suited the politics. Of five selected candidates the choice fell on Tereshkova — partly for her working-class background and parachuting experience, partly for the propaganda effect. The Vostok 3KA craft itself was identical to Gagarin's: a spherical descent capsule, automatic control and ejection on landing.
The first woman in space. A former textile worker and amateur parachutist, chosen from five candidates. During the flight she used the call sign "Chaika" (Seagull).
open person →At 09:29 UTC an R-7 rocket carrying Vostok 6 lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Aboard sat the 27-year-old Valentina…
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Vostok 6 was not alone in space. Valery Bykovsky had launched in Vostok 5 on 14 June, and now both craft circled the Earth at the…
číst kapitolu →During the flight it emerged that Tereshkova did not feel well in weightlessness — she suffered from nausea and fatigue. Even so…
číst kapitolu →After nearly three days the braking engine fired and Vostok 6 headed for Earth. Like all Vostok cosmonauts, Tereshkova ejected…
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MISSION IN NUMBERS
OČITÉ SVĚDECTVÍ„Hey sky, take off your hat!
Tereshkova became world-famous and, at home, a symbol of the equality of Soviet women. Even so, it took another nineteen years before a second woman flew (Svetlana Savitskaya, 1982). Vostok 6 remains the final flight of the Vostok program, which was succeeded by the Voskhod and then the Soyuz spacecraft.
- Tereshkova remains the only woman ever to have flown a solo space mission.
- She spent longer in space than all of America's Mercury astronauts combined.
- A guidance-program error would have made the ship drift away from Earth instead of descending — it was fixed with uploaded data on the first day.
- It was the last mission of the Vostok program; it was replaced by the Voskhod and then the Soyuz spacecraft.
- Within six months of the flight she married cosmonaut Nikolayev — their daughter was the first child of two people who had both flown in space.
