First Women Astronauts
On June 16, 1963 is a historic date for space and humanity: Valentina Tereshkova, 26, Soviet citizen, became the first woman cosmonaut in the world. A little over two years in another historic flight, Gagarin Juri on the morning of April 12, 1961 opened to man the path of space, the Russians scored another victory in the space race.
And this of Tereshkova is also a record destined to last over time, much more than his colleague Gagarin. It will be necessary to wait twenty years for another women to go into space. It’s another Soviet Svetlana Savitskaja in August 1982, who repeated the experience of Tereshkova.
However, as times have changed and means (the Russians have opened since 1971 the system of the “space train” and sent on many missions to space crews of three or more astronauts to occupy the space stations), Svetlana Savitskaya in “Soyuz T-7″ does not travel alone as Valentina Tereshkova in the “Vostok 6.” beside it are the commander Leonid Popov and engineer on board Alecsandro Serebrov.
This male presence made rivers of ink in newspapers around the world. Immediately after the trio of Russian space flight, word spread that Svetlana, in the name of science have been player of the first space love. The Russians repeatedly denied such an event, but in reality with little conviction.
Moreover, the first two cosmonauts histora know very little. Tereshkova is known comes from a humble family, which Adrian sedivorció Cosmonaut Nikolayev, who has a daughter and that after the historic flight he became a kind of myth in Russia. This is to the point, left space activity was devoted to politics with great success, going even part of the presidium of the Supreme Soviet.
Svetlana Savitskaya was, however, “daughter of specialists.” His father was Air Marshal Evgeni Savitskja, twice Hero of the Soviet Union by the merit of World War II, and as “like father like son,” Svetlana was playing with airplanes as a child rather than with dolls. His great passion was sky diving, to the point that at age 17 had already won three world records over 500 releases to his credit.
Unlike the Russian cosmonauts, Sally Ride, the first American on board the shuttle “Challenger” flew in space in June 1983, he knows everything or almost everything. Sally Ride was born in Encino, a suburb of Los Angeles bourgeois something nice, blue eyes and dark hair, 1.63 meters tall and 52 kg. weight. It looked like a girl who arrived by mistake in sterile world of the American space agency. But this is only in appearance. In fact, Sally always wanted to be an astronaut: “Since I was 12 or 13 years and was the time of the Mercury and Gemini spacecraft,” he says. “And so when I read in a newspaper of the University (Ride Sally graduated from Stanford with a thesis in astrophysics) that NASA astronauts seeking candidates for the” shuttle “, I dropped everything and rushed to introduce myself.”
Along with it were presented as shown in the archives of NASA, 8079 candidates, of whom 1544 were women. “All,” continued Sally, “I said I was crazy and asked me what my chances might be. But I was determined to achieve my objectives.”
Random Posts
Posted in Astronomy | 
Tags: First Women Astronauts, Gagarin Juri, historic flight, Svetlana Savitskaya, Valentina Tereshkova, woman cosmonaut