The current series is The First Woman, and today I am breaking one of my self-imposed rules. I always feel that history is a dish best served cold. You just need some time to let the dust settle and to let the skeletons to emerge and be placed in context, and that is why the number one qualification you need to appear on my show is you need to be dead. But when I pitched this series to you lovely voters, I promised an episode on the first woman in space, and it never crossed my mind that she might still be alive… But she is. So, Valentina, on the off chance that you’re listening to my little English language podcast, I hope you like it, and could you please answer some of my unsettled questions?

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In the aftermath of World War II, it was abundantly clear that technological superiority was king, and any country that wanted to come out on top needed to build the best machines, especially in the new and final frontier: space. The two main rivals in the race to space were the United States and the Soviet Union, and I can say without hesitation that the Soviets won all of the opening rounds.

They were the first to get an artificial satellite into orbit. That was Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957. The US and its allies were shocked, dismayed, and concerned that it was the beginning of the end. Money for the US space program began to flow.

Sputnik 1 was still in orbit when Sputnik 2 launched carrying a living dog. Her name was Laika, and she is the subject of this month’s bonus episode, available on Patreon and Substack.

The US didn’t get their first satellite up until months later.

On April 12, 1961, the Soviets achieved another triumph with the Vostok I, which launched Yuri Gagarin into orbit as the first human being in space. He’s called a cosmonaut because that’s the word the Soviets chose from the Greek word kosmos for universe and nautes for sailor. The US chose the word astronaut for the same job title, and they didn’t get Alan Sheppard up there for a few more weeks. The Soviets win again.

Can Women Do Space?

One race that was still open was who could put the first woman in space?

It could be argued that women were better than men for this job for one simple reason. On average, women are about 27 pounds lighter than men. I had a little trouble finding out how much it cost per pound to launch at this point, but even the low end is on the order of $14,000 per pound. Do a little math and you’ll see that sending the average man to space cost $400,000 more than sending the average woman (Jones, 8). Yes, I know there are small men and large women. I’m just saying that if we’re going to exclude a whole gender, there was a solid reason why the one excluded should have been the menfolks.

The US response to that fact of biology was to test train the Mercury 13 women, many of whom performed extremely well before being told that no American woman was going up. Multiple powerful men just couldn’t handle that as a concept, but the official nail to the ground was the requirement that astronauts had to be military pilots. The military didn’t allow women to do that role, ergo they weren’t military pilots, even when they were accomplished pilots, as all of the Mercury 13 women were. The American woman who got to space at this point was fictional. She was Astronaut Barbie, who was released in 1965 and was way ahead of her time.

The Soviets didn’t have these issues. They knew about the Mercury 13 women, and they still thought they could beat the US on this point. Their spacecraft were more automated, and they didn’t require their candidates to be pilots already. Parachute experience was considered enough. Reportedly, one man in mission control had pointed out that Catherine the Great had no experience ruling the Russian Empire until she ruled the Russian Empire, and yet she did it better than all her male successors (Zak, Vostok 6 Aftermath). None of them get called “the Great.”

More than that, the misogyny aspect was different in Communist countries. I discussed this in episode 7.11, the 20^th Century Housewife. In societies where the labor of the people was a community good, the community more than happy to have women work. In fact, women were often required to work. The problem was more that society failed to notice that women already were working, and they largely failed to make acceptable provisions for the traditionally feminine tasks. Capitalists had (and have) this problem too. But that’s tangential to the point that the Soviets accepted and encouraged women to join their cosmonaut training program. The men were (mostly) down with it. It was fine.

Valentina and the Selection Process

One of the trainees was Valentina Tereshkova. She was born on March 6, 1937. Her parents were ordinary laborers and her father died young, during the war in Finland. Valentina was late to start school and early to quit it (at least by my standards). At age 16 she was working in a cotton mill with her mother. But she also had a hobby and that was parachute jumping. She had made over 100 jumps before she heard the news of Yuri Gagarin’s triumph (Gibson, 51-52).

Valentina wrote to the space agency asking to be trained and recruitment was open to women of her age with aviation or parachuting experience. Of the fifty-eight women who applied, twenty-three were chosen in the initial rounds of testing and five were accepted into the program, including Valentina (Gibson, 43).

In 1962, Valentina and her cohort moved to Star City, a compound north of Moscow, for six months of training. Six months is not very long, especially when you consider that the prerequisite experience was not as high as what the Americans required.

But there is no doubt that those six months were grueling. It included sports like swimming and gymnastics, but also endurance tests like spinning in a giant centrifuge, spending hours in a room at 158°F and 30% humidity, carrying out basic tasks while in a jet dive. And of course, many ground and water landings, all within an ill-fitting spacesuit because it only came in one size and that size was designed for—you guessed it—the men (Gibson, 44).

They also had to prepare to use the radio equipment that was necessary for communication. Since you could never know who else was listening into your radio communication, the training also included instruction in coding the responses. So if the breaking engine was not working, she was to say vyaz which means elm tree. If the automated solar orientation was not working, she was to say olkha, which means alder tree. If she was in pain, she was to say verba, which means willow tree. And especially for her there was another code word, malina, which means raspberry, but in this code meant she had started menstruating (Russian space web). I have no info on how she was expected to handle that last possibility inside a space suit designed for a man, but there we are.

The five would-be female cosmonauts were constantly watched and ranked and at the end Valentina was chosen to go up in the Vostok 6.

Vostok 6 and the First Woman in Space

Vostok 5 was piloted by Valery Bykovsky on June 14, 1963, and Valentina watched him launch. It didn’t go that well, but he made it up. The idea was for them both to be in orbit at the same time, so she launched on June 16, 1963. Her launch was successful and that made her the fifth cosmonaut in space. And first woman ever.

Her first words over the radio were her identification with her call sign. “It is I, Seagull.”

And later she said “I see the horizon. A light blue, a beautiful band. This is the Earth. How beautiful it is! All goes well” (Gibson, 53). She was also in touch with Bykovsky on Vostok 5 as well, and at one point he said that she was singing to him (Zak, Vostok 5 and 6).

Radio Moscow was the Soviet news service with an international audience. This was their English language announcement of triumph.

Valentina orbited the earth 48 times and spent three days in space (which was longer than all the US astronauts put together had done up to this time).

What Really Happened Up There?

So far I am fairly confident on the story, but now we enter a morass of problems.

According to the Soviet public announcements, everything about Valentina’s trip was an unqualified success. But most of my available sources are curiously lacking in details about the three days spent in orbit. It’s all rah, rah, a woman in space, isn’t she awesome? And that is certainly what the Soviets wanted the world to think.

But occasionally there are hints that maybe a few things weren’t going as well as they hoped. For me personally, what this highlights is the imperfection of historical sources. They are always incomplete and often biased. In this particular case, there is what the Soviets wanted the world to know, there is what the US sniffed out, and neither of those sources can be fully trusted. There is no peer-reviewed full-length biography of Valentina. Most of the English-language sources are only short bios, much shorter even than my episodes, and often without any sources cited.

So for example, I have one source that speculates that Vostok 5 and Vostok 6 were intended to have a rendezvous (which they didn’t). But the author speculates that merely because Vostok 6 didn’t really add anything new scientifically to the previous missions (at least according to him), and all the other Vostok missions had. Ergo, something was supposed to happen, but didn’t (Gurney, 91). On the other hand that book was written in the 70s by an American from the US military. I would not expect him to have access to the records the Soviets were definitely still keeping secret at that point.

Another source tells me that Soviet authorities were quietly furious with Valentina because she refused to make her log entries or do tests on the female body. The implication was that she was willfully uncooperative, and physicians said she was weak and suffered a breakdown (Gibson, 54). If true, none this was publicly admitted. But again, this is an American writer (writing after the Cold War at least), but without clearly specifying the source of this information.

My Russian source, with actual Soviet references listed, says that Valentina’s spacecraft was repeatedly lurching to the side when she maneuvered it, but it is unclear to me whether that is because she mishandled it (remember she wasn’t an experienced pilot), or because the machine was malfunctioning (remember all of this tech was new and assembled in a hurry). The same source also reports that she vomited once (unsurprising) and that ground control considered her answers about her health “evasive” and “unintelligible” (Zak, Tereshkova Orbits the Earth). The fact that this author cites Soviet sources is comforting, but that does not mean the whole story was released, even internally.

Still other sources mention problems, but only on the order of things like taking an unscheduled nap and mission planning forgetting to pack her a toothbrush (Knapton). There’s also an indication that Valentina could not do some of her assigned tasks because the design of the spaceship made it impossible for her to reach the materials she needed. That’s not willful disobedience; that’s bad planning. Also there’s another source that suggests the space suit was really not designed for feminine elimination needs (Zak, Vostok 5 Landing). Why are we not surprised?

Absolutely none of this was reported at the time, and Valentina didn’t mention these issues in her many, many public speeches later. So it leaves the question: which of all these things were true? And which were not?

What I do know is that after three days, Valentina came down and parachuted into a field in Kazakhstan, having made history. Ground control had been on edge because none of her telegraphed status messages were received. On landing, the curious villagers feasted her until the space agency picked her up (Zak, Lands Successfully).

The Legacy

Then the publicity began in earnest. There was a grand entrance into Moscow. Valentina was showered with money, clothes, a car, household appliances, all kinds of things, plus the Hero of the Soviet Union award. Everyone wanted to meet the woman who had gone to space. Valentina did multiple international tours. She was in constant demand at conferences and peace councils and festivals and all that.

What she did not do was go back to space. Again my sources are fuzzy on the reasons, but it is at least suspected that this was not her choice. Maybe she was blacklisted because the authorities were displeased with her performance. Maybe they decided that military pilots were the way after all.

But since the Soviets didn’t publicly admit any of displeasure, there is also another possibility. Maybe Valentina was simply more valuable as a touring celebrity than she was as a cosmonaut. She couldn’t be risked in what was still a very hazardous occupation. It wouldn’t look good if the first woman in space was also the first woman to die in space.

Either way, there was no more space travel for Valentina.

Nor, I might add, did any other woman from her training cohort ever get up in space. One indication that Valentina’s flight was more for show than for equality was that the Soviets didn’t send up another woman for two decades. Svetlana Savitskaya went to space as the second woman ever in 1982. Because yes, that’s right, the Americans still hadn’t sent a woman up.

The US didn’t catch up to Valentina until 1983 when Sally Ride was the first American woman and the third woman of any nationality to go.

As for Valentina, she continued to work out of Star City for decades. She married a fellow cosmonaut, and every one of my sources feels it’s necessary to mention that. Presumably a lot of the other cosmonauts also got married, but space histories generally don’t feel the need to mention it. Make of that what you will.

Valentina retired from the Russian Air Force in 1997 and entered politics.

In 2022, Valentina apparently voted in favor of Russia invading Ukraine (Cowing), and this kind of stuff is precisely why I do not want to cover living people as a general rule. The mere fact that she voted yes does not tell me why she voted that way, what information she had, what kind of pressure she was under, or whether she has any regrets. I do know that a lot people have suffered and died in the aftermath, including a great many Russians. Some day, we may have a full-length peer-reviewed biography of Valentina that will explain that decision.

As for space, there are currently nearly 800 people who have been there. They come from almost 50 countries, and over 100 of them have been women. If you are finding my numbers a little vague, well, yeah, they are. Apparently the definition of where earth ends and space begins is a little nebulous, so exact counts vary. But by any definition, there is no doubt that Yuri Gagarin was the first person and Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman to get there.

Today I have a special thank you to Trinity and LGD, both of whom signed up as supporters on Patreon. Fabulous people like Trinity and LGD help keep the show up and running for everyone, and they also both get access to that special bonus episode on Laika, the dog who preceded Valentina. If you’re able to help out, you are much appreciated too. If you’d rather do a one time donation on Buy Me a Coffee, that’s much appreciated too. If you haven’t already voted for the topic of series 17, please do!

Selected Sources

Cowing, Keith. “First Woman in Space Sanctioned for Ukraine Invasion Support.” NASA Watch, Oct. 2022, https://nasawatch.com/2022/10/01/first-woman-in-space-sanctioned-for-ukraine-invasion-support/. Accessed 18 July 2026.

“First Woman in Space.” HistoricWings.Com :: A Magazine for Aviators, Pilots and Adventurers – a Magazine for Aviators, Adventurers and Pilots, 16 June 2012, https://fly.historicwings.com/2012/06/first-woman-in-space/. Accessed 16 July 2026.

Gibson, Karen Bush. Women in Space. Chicago Review Press, 1 Feb. 2014.

Gurney, Gene, and Clare Gurney. Cosmonauts in Orbit: The Story of the Soviet Manned Space Program. Franklin Watts, 1 Jan. 1972.

Jones, Harry. The Recent Large Reduction in Space Launch Cost. 2018.

Knapton, Sarah. “Russia Forgot to Send Toothbrush with First Woman in Space.” The Telegraph, 17 Sept. 2015, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/space/11871598/Russia-forgot-to-send-toothbrush-with-first-woman-in-space.html. Accessed 17 July 2026.

Zak, Anatoly. “Valentina Tereshkova Lands Successfully Aboard Vostok-6.” Russianspaceweb.Com, 2019, https://www.russianspaceweb.com/vostok6_landing.html. Accessed 17 July 2026.

—. “Valentina Tereshkova’s Journal Sheds New Light on Her Historic Spaceflight.” Smithsonian Magazine, 13 Nov. 2013, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/valentina-tereshkovas-journal-sheds-new-light-on-her-historic-spaceflight-180947687/. Accessed 14 July 2026.

—. “Vostok 6 Aftermath.” Russianspaceweb.Com, 2016, https://www.russianspaceweb.com/vostok6_aftermath.html. Accessed 18 July 2026.

—. “Tereshkova Orbits the Earth aboard Vostok-6.” Www.Russianspaceweb.Com, 2013, https://www.russianspaceweb.com/vostok6_flight.html. Accessed 17 July 2026.

—. “Vostok-5 Landing.” Russianspaceweb.Com, 2026, https://www.russianspaceweb.com/vostok5_landing.html. Accessed 18 July 2026.

“Emily Calandrelli Becomes the Hundredth Woman in Space.” The Planetary Society, 2025, https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/2025-100th-woman-in-space. Accessed 17 July 2026.