This is the life of Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman to go to space

According to NASA data, only 75 women have traveled to space up until March 2022.

The most recent woman to join the growing list of female astronauts is Christina Hammock Koch, who is scheduled to be part of the Artemis II crew, which is planned to travel around the moon in 2024.

Women, in fact, have been taking part of the scientific research done in the International Space Station since 2001 and have become a key part of the progress of the program, according to the US space agency.

Some female astronauts include Kayla Barron, Megan McArthur, Shannon Walker, Kate Rubina, Jessica Meir, Christina Koch, Anne McClain, Serena M. Auñón-Chancellor, Peggy Whitson, Samantha Cristoforetti (pictured), Elena Serova, Karen Nyberg, Sunita Williams, Cady Coleman, and Tracy Caldwell Dyson.

The first woman to write her name in the history of space travel was Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, who flew into outer space on Mission 6 of the Vostok program on June 16, 1963.

Tereshkova made her journey out of this world at the age of 26 and under the code name "Chaika" ("Seagull" in Russian). The first female space traveler took 48 revolutions around our planet's orbit in three days.

Tereshkova was selected for her historical voyage out of over 400 applicants and five runner-ups to pilot Vostok 6. She remains, to date, the only woman to fly a solo space mission.

The first woman to go to space was born in 1937 into a humble family from Belarus. Tereshkova's father was a tractor driver who became a hero during the Second World War, and her mother was a textile factory worker.

From a very young age, Tereshkova became interested in the world of skydiving, making her first jump in 1959, at the age of 22. It was precisely her love of skydiving that led her to lead her life to finally become an astronaut and reach space.

Tereshkova was also committed with politics from a very young age. She became secretary of the Komsomol (the Young Communist League) and became a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union shortly after.

After Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space in 1961, the Soviet Union, and chief rocket engineer Sergei Korolev, worked hard to find a woman who would become a milestone in the space race against the United States.

Out of 400 candidates, only five were chosen for space travel. Besides Valentina Tereshkova herself, there was Tatiana Kuznetsova, Irina Soloviova, Zhanna Yiórkina and Valentina Ponomariova.

Tereshkova was chosen at the end, among other things, because of her “proletarian” origin and because her father, Vladimir Tereshkov, was a Soviet war hero after dying in combat during the Winter War against Finland.

After several months of hard training (weightless flights, isolation tests, centrifuge tests, rocket theory, space engineering, etc.) the Soviet Union picked two women to go into space. The one chosen for the first trip was Tereshkova.

Originally, Tereshkova would be in charge of piloting the Vostok 5 and Valentina Ponomariova the Vostok 6, but in March 1963 the flight plan was altered. Valeri Bykovski took over Vostok 5, setill the still-unbroken record for longest solo space flight. Tereshkova ended up piloting Vostok 6, launched into space two days after Bykovski.

Tereshkova's space voyage went from June 16 to June 19, 1963. It was quite an eventful trip, as the cosmonaut later confessed. She experienced severe nausea and headaches, plus an error in the navigation program that she had no way to control.

After her space mission, Valentina Tereshkova was admitted to the Soviet Air Force. She graduated as a space engineer in 1969, the same year that the women's group of cosmonauts was dissolved. She received her doctorate in 1977.

The first woman in space continued working in the Air Force for several decades until retiring at the age of 60, in 1997.

Parallel to her military career, Tereshkova has been very politically active. She was a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (1966-1974), a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (1969-1991), and part of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (1974-1989), just to name a few.

She has remained active after the end of the USSR. Although Tereshkova lost in 1995 the elections to the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian legislature, she managed to get elected in 2011 as a representative of Yaroslavl Oblast for the United Russia party.

Tereshkova became part of the parliamentary group for the protection of Christian values, supporting the introduction of amendments to the Russian Constitution declaring Orthodox Christianity as the national and cultural foundation of Russia.

During the Soviet era, Tereshkova was given quite a few honors by the USSR such as Hero of the Soviet Union (1963), Order of Lenin (1963, 1981), Order of the October Revolution (1971), Order of the Red Banner of Labour (1987), and the Order of the Friendship of Peoples.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Tereshkova continued to recieve recognition from the Russian Federation. She has been granted the Order of Merit of the Fatherland (1997, 2007), the Order of Alexander Nevsky (2013), the Order of Honor (2003), the Order of Friendship (2011) and the State Prize of the Russian Federation (2009).

An illustrious career behind her, Valentina Tereshkova remains active and has expressed her desire to travel to Mars, something she even requested to Vladimir Putin in person. Never mind that she's in her 80s and such travel would be a one-way trip, the first woman in space still dreams to be among the stars.