Snapshots in History: June 16: Celebrating Women Astronauts in Outer Space
June 16, 2015 | John P. | Comments (0)
On June 16 and beyond, take a moment to celebrate the accomplishments of past, present and future women astronauts and cosmonauts, beginning with the first female cosmonaut in space, Soviet/Russian space pioneer Valentina Tereshkova, who blasted off in Vostok (Orient or East) 6 on June 16, 1963, piloting the spacecraft for 48 orbits around the Earth for a mission duration of 2 days, 22 hours, and 50 minutes. Tereshkova fell ill during the flight and vomited on account of the taste of the provided food. Apparently, she ate little of the provided “space food” during the mission and proceeded to swap it with local farmers for local food upon her ground landing in the Altai Region of the Russian Federation. High winds made the landing more difficult as Vostok 6 almost landed in a lake, and strong wind gusts caused Valentina Tereshkova to hit her face on the inside of her space helmet, resulting in a nose bleed and a bruise under one eye.
In 2004, it was revealed that the control program of Vostok 6 included an error that caused orbital ascent rather than orbital descent. Valentina Tereshkova reported the problem to spacecraft designer Sergei Korolev, whose team provided corrective data to fix the problem. At Korolev’s request, Tereshkova agreed to keep this problem secret and did so for many years until someone else revealed what had happened.
Nineteen (19) years and two (2) months passed before the second female cosmonaut in space, Svetlana Savitskaya, flew aboard Soyuz T-7 to the Salyut 7 space station on August 19, 1982. Savitskaya was also the first women cosmonaut/astronaut to perform a spacewalk on July 25, 1984 for three (3) hours and 35 minutes during which time she cut and welded metals with a male colleague. Savitskaya was the first female
Dr. Sally Ride (1951-2012) was the first American woman astronaut in space and the third woman astronaut/cosmonaut in space overall as part of the crew aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger for mission STS-7 on June 18, 1983. After two space flights on board the Challenger, she left the American National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1987. Ride served on committees that investigated the Challenger and Columbia shuttle disasters.
Dr. Roberta Bondar was Canada’s first female astronaut (and the first neurologist) in space, flying aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery on Mission STS-42 from January 22-30, 1992 as a payload specialist for the first International Microgravity Laboratory Mission (IML-1).
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) launched its first woman taikonaut, Liu Yang, aboard the Shenzhou 9 spacecraft (as part of a three person crew) on June 16, 2012, 49 years after Valentina Tereshkova’s flight aboard Vostok 6.
Altogether, as of November 2014, 59 female astronauts/cosmonauts/taikonauts/etc. have flown in space with 44 coming from the United States of America (U.S.A.), four (4) from Russia/Soviet Union, two (2) each from Canada, China, and Japan, and one each from France, India, Italy, South Korea, and the United Kingdom.
Consider the following titles for borrowing from Toronto Public Library collections as we celebrate women in outer space:
Books:
