Who Was the First Woman in Space? Valentina Tereshkova's 1963 Spaceflight

The Achievement

On June 16, 1963, Valentina Tereshkova launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan aboard Vostok 6. She was 26 years old, a former textile factory worker with no military flight experience, and she was about to become the first woman to leave Earth's atmosphere.

Over the next 2 days, 22 hours, and 50 minutes, Tereshkova orbited the planet 48 times. She logged more flight time in that single mission than all American astronauts in the Mercury program combined. Her call sign was Chaika, the Russian word for seagull.

Twenty years would pass before another woman reached space. It would take two decades more for women in space to become anything close to routine.

Life Before the Cosmonaut Corps

Tereshkova grew up in the Yaroslavl region of Russia. Her father, a tractor driver, was killed in the Winter War with Finland when she was two. Her mother worked in a textile factory, and Tereshkova followed her there at age 18, working the loom while studying by correspondence.

Her path to space had nothing to do with engineering or military aviation. It started with parachuting. She joined a local aeroclub in 1959 and made her first jump that year. By 1962, she had completed 126 parachute jumps.

That skill caught the attention of Soviet space officials. After Yuri Gagarin's 1961 flight, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev pushed for a woman to fly in space. The Soviets selected five women from more than 400 applicants, all experienced parachutists rather than test pilots. Tereshkova was one of them.

The Vostok 6 Mission

Tereshkova's mission launched simultaneously with Vostok 5, piloted by Valery Bykovsky. The two spacecraft came within 5 kilometers of each other, and the cosmonauts communicated by radio.

The mission was not without problems. Tereshkova later revealed that a programming error in the spacecraft's automatic navigation system would have sent her into a higher orbit, away from Earth, rather than guiding her back. She identified the error and Soviet engineers uploaded a correction. The details were classified for decades.

She experienced nausea and physical discomfort for much of the flight, common among cosmonauts on early missions. Despite this, she completed her assigned experiments and maintained communication with ground control.

Tereshkova ejected from the capsule at about 6,000 meters altitude during re-entry and parachuted to the ground in the Altai region, landing on June 19, 1963.

The Twenty-Year Gap

After Tereshkova's flight, no woman went to space for 19 years. The reasons are both political and institutional.

The Soviet Union treated the mission primarily as a propaganda victory. Having achieved the "first woman in space" milestone, Soviet leadership saw no reason to invest in additional women cosmonauts. The four other women in Tereshkova's group were quietly dismissed from the program.

In the United States, women were explicitly excluded from astronaut selection. NASA required military test pilot experience, a field closed to women. This was not an oversight. It was policy.

The Mercury 13 program tells part of the story. In 1960 and 1961, Dr. William Randolph Lovelace II (who designed the tests for the Mercury astronauts) privately tested 13 women pilots using the same physical and psychological evaluations. All 13 passed. Jerrie Cobb completed all three phases of testing and scored in the top 2% of all candidates, male or female.

NASA canceled the program. A 1962 Congressional hearing on the matter went nowhere. John Glenn testified that "the men go off and fight the wars and fly the airplanes." The women of Mercury 13 never flew.

Sally Ride and the American First

In 1978, NASA finally opened astronaut selection to women. Sally Ride, a PhD physicist from Stanford, was one of six women selected in that class. On June 18, 1983, she launched aboard Space Shuttle Challenger on mission STS-7, becoming the first American woman in space.

Ride was 32. She operated the shuttle's robotic arm to deploy satellites and conducted experiments in pharmaceutical manufacturing. She flew a second mission in 1984.

The media coverage of Ride's selection and flight was often fixated on her gender rather than her qualifications. Reporters asked her whether spaceflight affected her reproductive organs and whether she cried on the job. Ride handled the questions with patience and deflection, but the absurdity of the questions revealed how far attitudes still had to shift.

Ride left NASA in 1987 and became a physics professor at the University of California, San Diego. She founded Sally Ride Science, a company creating science programs for young students, with a focus on encouraging girls. She died of pancreatic cancer on July 23, 2012, at age 61.

Women Who Followed

Svetlana Savitskaya (1982, 1984): Second woman in space and first woman to perform a spacewalk. She walked in space on July 25, 1984, outside the Salyut 7 space station, where she welded metals in microgravity for 3 hours and 35 minutes.

Mae Jemison (1992): First Black woman in space. A physician and chemical engineer, she flew as a mission specialist on Space Shuttle Endeavour (STS-47), orbiting Earth 127 times.

Eileen Collins (1999): First woman to command a Space Shuttle. She commanded Columbia on STS-93, deploying the Chandra X-ray Observatory. She had previously been the first woman to pilot a shuttle in 1995.

Christina Koch (2019-2020): Set the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman at 328 days aboard the International Space Station. She also participated (with Jessica Meir) in the first all-female spacewalk on October 18, 2019.

Tereshkova's Later Life

After her spaceflight, Tereshkova earned a doctorate in technical sciences and entered politics. She served in the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union and later in the Russian State Duma. She received the Order of Lenin, the Hero of the Soviet Union award (twice), and numerous international honors.

In 2013, at age 76, she volunteered for a one-way trip to Mars if the opportunity arose.

As of 2026, Valentina Tereshkova is 89 years old and remains the only woman ever to have completed a solo space mission. Every other woman who has flown in space has done so as part of a crew.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was the first woman in space?

Valentina Tereshkova of the Soviet Union became the first woman in space on June 16, 1963, aboard Vostok 6. She orbited Earth 48 times over nearly three days.

Who was the first American woman in space?

Sally Ride became the first American woman in space on June 18, 1983, as a mission specialist on Space Shuttle Challenger (STS-7). She was a PhD physicist from Stanford.

How long was Valentina Tereshkova in space?

Tereshkova spent 2 days, 22 hours, and 50 minutes in space, completing 48 orbits of Earth.

Why was there a 20-year gap between Tereshkova and the next woman in space?

The Soviet program treated Tereshkova's flight as a propaganda milestone and did not prioritize sending more women. NASA required military test pilot experience, which excluded women entirely until 1978.

Who was the first woman to walk in space?

Svetlana Savitskaya of the Soviet Union conducted the first spacewalk by a woman on July 25, 1984, outside the Salyut 7 space station.