Valentina Tereshkova
"Tereshkova" redirects here. For the Kazakh sprinter, see Olga Tereshkova. For the lunar crater, see Tereshkova (crater). This name uses Eastern Slavic naming customs; the patronymic is Vladimirovna and the family name is Tereshkova. Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova (Russian: Валенти на Влади мировна Терешко ва; IPA: [vɐlʲɪnʲˈtʲinə vlɐˈdʲimʲɪrəvnə tʲɪrʲɪʂˈkovə] ( listen); born 6 March 1937) is a retired Soviet cosmonaut and engineer, and the first woman to have flown in space, having been selected from more than four hundred applicants and five finalists to pilot Vostok 6 on 16 June 1963. In order to join the Cosmonaut Corps, Tereshkova was only honorarily inducted into the Soviet Air Force and thus she also became the first civilian to fly in space. Before her recruitment as a cosmonaut, Tereshkova was a textile factory assembly worker and an amateur skydiver. After the dissolution of the first group of female cosmonauts in 1969, she became a prominent member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, holding various political offices. She remained politically active following the collapse of the Soviet Union and is still referred as a heroine in post-Soviet Russia. In 2013 she offered to go on a one-way trip to Mars if the opportunity arose. At the opening ceremony of the 2014 Winter Olympics she was a flag-carrier of the Olympic flag.