It's 1963. You're 26 years old. You’ve left school at 16 to work in a textile factory. On weekends, you sneak off to jump out of airplanes, perhaps as an escape from day to day life. Suddenly, out of 400 candidates, you are chosen to become the first woman in space.
You’re launched into orbit alone, riding in a spacecraft with settings so wrong, if you hadn’t caught the mistake, you would have drifted endlessly into the void. You fix it. You stay calm. You orbit the Earth 48 times. And when you land, you're told to smile for the cameras - because you're not just a cosmonaut anymore. You're a symbol. A political tool.
Sources
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Valentina-Tereshkova
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/june-16/first-woman-in-space
https://nmspacemuseum.org/inductee/valentina-v-tereshkova/
https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/space-race
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2367681.stm
https://www.space.com/v2-rocket
https://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/1165/2216
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