Photo exhibition marking 55th anniversary of Valentina Tereshkova’s space flight opened in Baku

A photo exhibition marking 55th anniversary of the space flight of Valentina Tereshkova – the first woman-cosmonaut, opened at the Russian Information and Cultural Center in Baku.

Valentina Tereshkova was born on March 6, 1937 in Yaroslavl Region in a family of collective farmers. At the age of 17 she started working as a textile-factory worker and later on took an interest in parachuting.

At the end of 1961, it was decided to train women for a space flight. Female cosmonaut corps numbered hundreds of applicants. After careful tests, three of them were selected to get prepared for the flight: V. Ponomaryova, I. Solovyova, and V. Tereshkova. It was Tereshkova who was eventually chosen to be the main candidate.

On June 16 1963 Valentina Tereshkova set off for her landmark space flight, which took 2 days 22 hours and 50 minutes. She orbited the earth 48 times and flew 1 million 971 thousand km. The flight was hard, nevertheless, despite physical discomfort, she kept a logbook and took photographs of the horizon, which later were used to detect aerosol layers in the atmosphere.

She became the tenth person who had been in space, and is still the only woman who had made a space flight alone. It was only 19 years later that the next woman flew into space. Svetlana Savitskaya was the second woman-cosmonaut.

The exhibition displays archival photographs that reflect the life stages of the legendary woman: her youth, the time of training, her flight into space, photos with friends, astronauts etc.

The Presidential Library provides free access to newsreels, periodicals, books, reflecting the milestones of Russian cosmonautics available on its website via «Open Space» collection.