Tereshkova’s call sign for the duration of the flight is “Seagull”; the phrase she said before the start: “Hey! Heaven, take off your hat! (modified quote from V. Mayakovsky’s poem “A Cloud in Pants”).
Interesting facts about the first flight of a woman into space.
1. The world's first female cosmonaut was chosen from among female paratroopers. After the first successful flights into space by Yuri Gagarin and German Titov, Sergei Korolev decided to send a woman into space. This was a politically motivated move. I wanted to be the first in this too.
The search for applicants began at the very end of 1961. The requirements were as follows: parachutist, age up to 30 years, height up to 170 centimeters and weight up to 70 kilograms. Parachutists were given preference because the Vostok cosmonaut had to eject after braking the descent vehicle in the atmosphere and land by parachute, and the period for preparation was initially determined to be short - about six months. I didn’t want to spend a lot of time practicing parachute landings.
Out of more than fifty candidates, five girls were ultimately selected. Valentina Tereshkova was among them. All of them, except for the pilot Valentina Ponomareva, were parachutists. Valentina Tereshkova has been involved in parachuting since 1959 at the Yaroslavl Aero Club: by the time she was looking for a candidate for space flight, she had completed a total of about 90 jumps.
2. The girls selected for space flight hoped that they would all fly into space sooner or later. Of course, each of the five girls dreamed that she would fly into space. To ensure that the atmosphere in the women’s team was friendly, Korolev promised the girls that they would all be there sooner or later.
But this, as we know, did not happen. Although they really planned to send other girls into space, and they were preparing for this for several years after Valentina Tereshkova’s flight. Only in October 1969 was an order issued to disband the female cosmonaut group. So only Valentina Tereshkova, out of five girls who underwent training, was able to become a real cosmonaut.
3. Valentina Tereshkova had two understudies. In practice, it is accepted that each astronaut must have a backup. In the case of the first female flight, they decided to play it safe - Tereshkova was assigned two doubles at once due to the complexity of the female body. Irina Solovyova and Valentina Ponomareva were substitutes.
Why did the choice fall on Tereshkova? The leadership never justified its choice, but, according to the main existing version, this decision was rather political. Tereshkova was from the workers; her father died during the Soviet-Finnish war when she was two years old. Other girls, for example, Ponomareva and Solovyova, were employees. Nikita Khrushchev, who approved the final candidacy, apparently wanted a girl “from the people” to become the first female cosmonaut.
Valentina Tereshkova, born in a village in the family of a tractor driver and a textile factory worker, met these requirements better than others. Although the doctors who observed the girls were inclined to give priority to other candidates - for example, Irina Solovyova, a master of sports in parachuting, who made more than 700 jumps. According to another version, Sergei Korolev was planning another female flight with an exit into outer space, and it was for this purpose that he saved the stronger, according to doctors, Solovyov and Ponomarev.
Tereshkova at the medical examination:
4. Initially, it was planned for two female crews to fly simultaneously. According to the original plan, two girls were supposed to fly into space at the same time in different devices, but in the spring of 1963 this idea was abandoned. Therefore, on June 14, 1963, in the afternoon, Valery Bykovsky was sent into space on the Vostok-5 spacecraft. His flight to this day is considered the longest single flight: Valery spent almost 5 days in space. That is, two days more than Valentina Tereshkova.
5. Valentina Tereshkova’s relatives learned about the flight only after it ended. The flight could have ended in tragedy, so Valentina Tereshkova kept information about it secret from her family. Before the flight, she told them that she was going to a parachute competition, and they had already learned about what had happened on the radio.
6. There was an inaccuracy in the ship's automatic program. A mistake was made and the Vostok-6 ship was oriented in such a way that, instead of descending, on the contrary, it raised its orbit. Instead of approaching the Earth, V. Tereshkova moved away from it. The Chaika notified the mission control center about the malfunction, and scientists were able to adjust the program.
For several decades, none of the participants in the events, at Korolev’s request, spoke about this story, and only relatively recently did it become a generally known fact.
Tereshkova in a spacesuit, 1963:
7. In total, Valentina Tereshkova flew almost 2 million kilometers. The launch of Vostok-6 took place on the morning of June 16, 1963, and Valentina Tereshkova landed on the morning of June 19. In total, the flight lasted two days, 22 hours and 41 minutes. During this time, the astronaut made 48 orbits around the Earth, flying a total of approximately 1.97 million kilometers.
At the time of the flight, Valentina Tereshkova was only 26 years old. In the spacecraft cabin:
8. The flight was not easy, the landing was scary. At that time, it was not customary to talk about difficulties. Therefore, Valentina Tereshkova did not report that the flight was difficult. It was very difficult to stay for three days in a heavy space suit that restricted movement. But she persevered: she did not ask for a premature termination of the flight.
Valentina was especially scared during landing. There was a lake below her; she could not control a large heavy parachute that opened at an altitude of 4 km. And although astronauts were taught to splash down, Valentina was not sure that she would have enough strength to stay on the water after an exhausting flight. But in the end, Valentina Tereshkova was lucky: she flew over the lake.
Valentina Tereshkova and Yuri Gagarin:
9. The newsreel footage was staged. The newsreel footage depicting the landing of the descent module was staged. They were filmed the day after Tereshkova actually returned to Earth. When the girl returned, she was in very bad condition and was rushed to the hospital. But she soon came to her senses and felt fine the next day.
In the photo: First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Nikita Khrushchev (right) and cosmonauts Valentina Tereshkova, Pavel Popovich (center) and Yuri Gagarin on the podium of the V.I. Lenin Mausoleum on Red Square during a rally dedicated to the successful completion of the flight on the Vostok spacecraft -5" by Valery Bykovsky and "Vostok-6" by Valentina Tereshkova, June 22, 1963:
10. Valentina “Chaika” Tereshkova is not only the first female cosmonaut in history. She is also the only woman on our planet to have completed a solo space flight. All other female cosmonauts and astronauts flew into space only as part of crews. Valentina Tereshkova's flight became a significant page in the history of space exploration.
Valentina Tereshkova, 1969:
11. Tereshkova is the first woman in Russia to receive the rank of major general.
12. After fulfilling her dream of space flight, Valentina did not stop dreaming. It would seem that what else could one dream about after the completion of such a flight and universal glory. But Tereshkova did not stop thinking about the possibility of new flights. She really wanted to go on a flight to Mars, and was even ready to fly there without the possibility of returning back. And after Tereshkova saw all the continents of the Earth from space, she began to dream of visiting Australia. After many years, she managed to fulfill her dream.
Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova. Born on March 6, 1937 in the village of Bolshoye Maslennikovo, Tutaevsky district, Yaroslavl region. Soviet cosmonaut No. 6, 10th cosmonaut in the world, the world's first female cosmonaut, Hero of the Soviet Union (1963).
Valentina Tereshkova was born on March 6, 1937 in the village of Bolshoye Maslennikovo, Tutaevsky district, Yaroslavl region, into a peasant family.
Father - Vladimir Aksenovich Tereshkov (1912-1940), born in the village of Vyylovo, Belynichi district, Mogilev region, tractor driver. In 1939 he was drafted into the Red Army and died in the Soviet-Finnish war.
Mother - Elena Fedorovna Tereshkova (nee Kruglova) (1913-1987), originally from the village of Eremeevshchina, Dubrovensky district, worked at a textile factory.
Older sister - Lyudmila. Younger brother - Vladimir.
Russian by nationality.
After the war, the family moved to Yaroslavl, where the mother began working as a weaver.
In 1945, Valentina entered secondary school No. 32 in the city of Yaroslavl (now named after Tereshkova).
Since childhood, she demonstrated a good ear for music and learned to play the domra.
In 1953, she graduated from seven classes of school and, to help her family, went to work at the Yaroslavl Tire Plant as a bracelet maker in the assembly and vulcanization shop in preparatory operations. There she operated a diagonal cutting machine. At the same time, she studied in evening classes at a school for working youth.
From April 1955, she worked for seven years as a weaver at the Krasny Perekop technical fabrics factory, where her mother and older sister also worked.
Since 1959, she has been involved in parachuting at the Yaroslavl flying club and performed 90 jumps.
Continuing to work at the Krasny Perekop textile mill, from 1955 to 1960 she completed correspondence studies at the Light Industry College. In 1957 she joined the Komsomol. Since August 11, 1960 - released secretary of the Komsomol committee of the Krasny Perekop plant.
After the first successful flights of Soviet cosmonauts, the idea came up to launch a female cosmonaut into space. At the beginning of 1962, a search began for applicants according to the following criteria: parachutist, under 30 years of age, up to 170 cm tall and weighing up to 70 kg.
Out of hundreds of candidates, five were chosen: Zhanna Yorkina, Tatyana Kuznetsova, Valentina Ponomareva, Irina Solovyova and Valentina Tereshkova. Immediately after being accepted into the cosmonaut corps, Tereshkova, along with the other girls, was called up for compulsory military service with the rank of privates.
On March 12, 1962, Valentina Tereshkova was enrolled in the cosmonaut corps and began training as a student-cosmonaut of the 2nd detachment. On November 29, 1962, she passed her final exams in OKP with “excellent marks.” Since December 1, 1962, Tereshkova has been a cosmonaut of the 1st detachment of the 1st department. On June 16, 1963, that is, immediately after the flight, she became an instructor-cosmonaut of the 1st detachment and held this position until March 14, 1966.
During her training, she underwent training on the body’s resistance to the factors of space flight. The training included a thermal chamber, where she had to be in a flight suit at a temperature of +70 ° C and a humidity of 30%, and a soundproof chamber - a room isolated from sounds, where each candidate had to spend 10 days.
Zero-gravity training took place on the MiG-15. When performing a parabolic slide, weightlessness was established inside the plane for 40 seconds, and there were 3-4 such sessions per flight. During each session, it was necessary to complete the next task: write your first and last name, try to eat, talk on the radio.
Particular attention was paid to parachute training, since the astronaut ejected before landing and landed separately by parachute. Since there was always a risk of the descent vehicle splashing down, training was also carried out on parachute jumps into the sea, in a technological, that is, not adjusted to size, spacesuit.
Initially, a simultaneous flight of two female crews was planned, but in March 1963 this plan was abandoned, and the task became to choose one of five candidates.
When choosing Tereshkova for the role of the first female cosmonaut, in addition to successfully completing training, political issues were also taken into account: Tereshkova was from the workers, while, for example, Ponomareva and Solovyova were from the employees. In addition, Tereshkova's father, Vladimir, died during the Soviet-Finnish War when she was two years old. After the flight, when Tereshkova was asked how the Soviet Union could thank her for her service, she asked to find the place where her father died.
Not the least selection criterion was the candidate’s ability to conduct active social activities - meeting people, speaking in public on numerous trips around the country and the world, demonstrating in every possible way the advantages of the Soviet system.
Other candidates, with no worse preparation (based on the results of a medical examination and theoretical preparedness of female cosmonaut candidates, Tereshkova was placed in last place), were noticeably inferior to Tereshkova in the qualities necessary for such social activities. Therefore, she was appointed as the main candidate for the flight, I.B. Solovyov as a backup, and V.L. Ponomarev as a reserve.
At the time of Tereshkova’s appointment as Vostok-6 pilot, she was 10 years younger than Gordon Cooper, the youngest of the first group of American astronauts.
Flight of Valentina Tereshkova on the Vostok-6 ship
Tereshkova made the world's first flight of a female cosmonaut on June 16, 1963 on the Vostok-6 spacecraft. It lasted almost three days. The launch took place at Baikonur not from the “Gagarin” site, but from a duplicate one. At the same time, the Vostok-5 spacecraft, piloted by cosmonaut Valery Bykovsky, was in orbit.
On the day of her flight into space, she told her family that she was leaving for a parachute competition; they learned about the flight from the news on the radio.
“The preparation of the rocket, the ship and all maintenance operations went extremely smoothly. In terms of the clarity and coherence of the work of all services and systems, Tereshkova’s launch reminded me of Gagarin’s launch. Like April 12, 1961, on June 16, 1963, the flight was prepared and started perfectly. Everyone who saw During the preparation for the launch and the launch of the spacecraft into orbit, Tereshkova, who listened to her reports on the radio, was unanimously told: “She carried out the launch better than Popovich and Nikolaev.” Yes, I am very glad that I was not mistaken in choosing the first female cosmonaut.”“,” Lieutenant General Nikolai Kamanin, who was involved in the selection and training of cosmonauts, described Tereshkova’s launch.
Tereshkova's call sign for the duration of the flight is "Gull".
The phrase she said before the start: "Hey! Sky! Take off your hat!(modified quote from V. Mayakovsky’s poem “A Cloud in Pants”).
During the flight, Tereshkova had problems with the orientation of the ship. “I talked to Tereshkova several times. I feel like she’s tired, but she doesn’t want to admit it. In the last communication session, she didn’t answer calls from the Leningrad IP. We turned on the television camera and saw that she was sleeping. We had to wake her up and talk to her both about the upcoming landing and about manual orientation. She tried to orient the ship twice and honestly admitted that she couldn’t do the pitch orientation. This circumstance worries us all very much: if we have to land manually, and she cannot orient the ship, then it will not. will leave orbit", - Sergei Korolev wrote in the journal on June 16, 1963.
Later it turned out that the commands issued by the pilot were inverted to the direction of control movement in manual mode (the ship turned in the wrong direction as when trained on the simulator). According to Tereshkova, the problem was the incorrect installation of the control wires: commands were given not to descend, but to raise the spacecraft’s orbit. In automatic mode, the polarity was correct, which made it possible to properly orient and land the ship. Valentina received new data from Earth and put it into the computer. Tereshkova remained silent about this case for more than forty years, because S.P. Korolev asked her not to tell anyone about this.
Valentina Tereshkova is the only woman in the world to have completed a solo space flight.
According to Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor V.I. Yazdovsky, who was responsible for the medical support of the Soviet space program at that time, women tolerate the extreme stress of space flight worse on the 14th-18th day of the monthly cycle. However, due to the fact that the launch of the carrier that put Tereshkova into orbit was delayed for a day, and also, obviously, due to the strong psycho-emotional load when putting the ship into orbit, the flight mode prescribed by the doctors could not be maintained.
Yazdovsky also notes that “Tereshkova, according to telemetry and television monitoring, endured the flight mostly satisfactorily. Negotiations with ground communication stations were sluggish. She sharply limited her movements. She sat almost motionless. She clearly showed changes in her health of a vegetative nature.”
Despite the nausea and physical discomfort, Tereshkova survived 48 revolutions around the Earth and spent almost three days in space, where she kept a logbook and took photographs of the horizon, which were later used to detect aerosol layers in the atmosphere.
The Vostok-6 descent module landed safely in the Baevsky district of the Altai Territory.
After landing, Tereshkova violated the regime in the area of the landing site: she distributed food supplies from the astronauts’ diet to local residents, and she herself ate local food after three days of fasting. According to the testimony of pilot Marina Popovich, S.P. Tereshkova was with her after the flight. Korolev said: “As long as I’m alive, not a single woman will fly into space again.” As you know, the next flight of a woman into space (Svetlana Savitskaya) took place 19 years later, in August 1982 (Korolev died in 1966).
They called her “Miss Universe”, dedicated poems and songs, and presented her with awards. However, Tereshkova was able to walk on her own only after a month, and throughout her subsequent life she suffered from bleeding and brittle bones.
After completing the space flight, Tereshkova entered the Air Force Engineering Academy named after. NOT. Zhukovsky and, having graduated with honors, later became a candidate of technical sciences, professor, and author of more than 50 scientific papers. Tereshkova was ready for a one-way flight to Mars.
From April 30, 1969 to April 28, 1997, Valentina Tereshkova - instructor-cosmonaut of the cosmonaut detachment of the 1st department of the 1st directorate of the group of orbital ships and stations, instructor-cosmonaut-tester of the group of orbital manned complexes for general and special purposes, 1st group of the detachment astronauts.
In 1982, she could even be appointed commander of the female crew of the Soyuz spacecraft. On April 30, 1997, Tereshkova left the squad - the last of the female recruits of 1962 due to reaching the age limit.
Since 1997 - senior researcher at the Cosmonaut Training Center.
Social and political activities of Valentina Tereshkova
Since March 1962 - member of the CPSU. In 1966-1989 - deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the VII-XI convocations. In 1971-1990 - member of the CPSU Central Committee. Delegate to the XXIV, XXV, XXVI and XXVII Congresses of the CPSU. In 1974-1989 - deputy and member of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.
In 1968-1987 she headed the Soviet Women's Committee. In 1969 - vice-president of the International Democratic Federation of Women, member of the World Peace Council.
In 1987-1992, Chairman of the Presidium of the Union of Soviet Societies for Friendship and Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries.
In 1989-1992 - People's Deputy of the USSR from the Union of Soviet Societies for Friendship and Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries and the Rodina Society.
On January 22, 1969, she was in a car fired upon by officer Viktor Ilyin during an assassination attempt.
In 1992 - Chairman of the Presidium of the Russian Association for International Cooperation. In 1992-1995 - First Deputy Chairman of the Russian Agency for International Cooperation and Development.
In 1994-2004 - head of the Russian Center for International Scientific and Cultural Cooperation.
In 1995, she was awarded the rank of Major General ( Russia's first woman with the rank of major general).
On September 14, 2003, at the II Congress of the Russian Party of Life, she was nominated as a candidate for deputy in the Elections to the State Duma of the 4th convocation on the Federal party list at number 3, but the party bloc did not overcome the electoral threshold.
In 2008-2011 - deputy of the Yaroslavl Regional Duma from the United Russia party, deputy chairman.
On April 5, 2008, she was a torchbearer of the Russian leg of the torch relay of the Beijing Olympics in St. Petersburg.
In 2011, she was elected to the State Duma of Russia from the United Russia party on the Yaroslavl regional list. Together with Elena Mizulina, Irina Yarova and Andrei Skoch, she was a member of the inter-factional parliamentary group for the protection of Christian values. In this capacity, she supported amendments to the Russian Constitution, according to which “Orthodoxy is the basis of the national and cultural identity of Russia.”
She headed the party list in the elections to the Yaroslavl Regional Duma in 2013.
On February 7, 2014, at the Opening Ceremony of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia carried the Olympic flag among eight selected people.
With the assistance and participation of Tereshkova, a university was opened in Yaroslavl, a new building for a technical school of light industry, a river station, a planetarium were built, and the Volga embankment was landscaped. Throughout his life he provides assistance to his native school and the Yaroslavl orphanage.
Since 2015 - President of the non-profit charitable foundation "Memory of Generations".
In the parliamentary elections on September 18, 2016, she took second place in the regional group of United Russia, which includes the Yaroslavl, Ivanovo, Kostroma and Tver regions.
Valentina Tereshkova. Seagull and Hawk
Personal life of Valentina Tereshkova:
First husband - Andriyan Grigorievich Nikolaev(1929-2004), USSR cosmonaut No. 3, twice Hero of the Soviet Union.
Their wedding took place in a government mansion on the Lenin Hills on November 3, 1963. Among the guests was. After the marriage and until the divorce, Tereshkova bore the double surname Nikolaeva-Tereshkova.
On June 8, 1964, their daughter Elena was born - the first child in the world whose father and mother were both astronauts.
The marriage of Tereshkova and Nikolaev was officially dissolved in 1982, after the daughter came of age. “At work there is gold, at home there is a despot,” Tereshkova said about her ex-husband.
However, according to the stories of people close to the couple, the marriage broke up when Tereshkova had another man and the affair could no longer be hidden. Allegedly, she asked for a divorce personally from Brezhnev, who gave the go-ahead.
After breaking up with her husband, Valentina Vladimirovna forbade Nikolaev to see Elena and soon demanded that her daughter change Nikolaev’s surname to her own - Tereshkova.
Nikolaev never married again.
Second husband - Yuliy Shaposhnikov(1931-1999), Major General of Medical Service, Director of the Central Institute of Traumatology and Orthopedics (CITO).
Daughter Elena Tereshkova- orthopedic surgeon, works at CITO. She was married twice.
The first husband is pilot Igor Alekseevich Mayorov (his father headed the Aeroflot representative office in Europe and was the personal pilot of the secretaries general - Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko and Gorbachev). The marriage gave birth to a son, Alexey, on October 20, 1995.
Tereshkova was against her daughter’s marriage to Igor Mayorov. During seven years of marriage, Igor never saw his mother-in-law. And Valentina Vladimirovna did not see her first grandson Alexei until she was five years old - until Elena divorced her first husband.
Elena - daughter of Valentina Tereshkova
The second husband is pilot Andrei Yuryevich Rodionov. We met when he came to her for a medical appointment. At that time, they were both married, Andrei also had a child (daughter). However, they filed for divorce and started a family. The marriage gave birth to a son, Andrei, on June 18, 2004.
Rodionov managed to establish relations with his famous mother-in-law; she gave her daughter’s new family a luxurious apartment in Granatny Lane, and communicates with her grandchildren. At the same time, Elena herself followed in her mother’s footsteps: she forbade her ex-husband Igor Mayorov to see her eldest son. Mayorov had to seek the right to communicate with the boy through the court.
Valentina Tereshkova with her daughter, son-in-law Andrei Rodionov and grandchildren
In 2004, Valentina Tereshkova underwent complex heart surgery, which prevented a heart attack.
He is an honorary citizen of the cities: Kaluga, Yaroslavl (Russia), Karaganda, Baikonur (until 1995 - Leninsk, Kazakhstan, 1977), Gyumri (until 1990 - Leninakan, Armenia, 1965), Vitebsk (Belarus, 1975), Montreux and Drancy (France) ), Montgomery (Great Britain), Polizzi-Generosa (Italy), Darkhan (Mongolia, 1965), Sofia, Burgas, Petrich, Stara Zagora, Pleven, Varna (Bulgaria, 1963), Bratislava (Slovakia, 1963).
In 1983, a commemorative coin with the image of V. Tereshkova was issued - she became the only Soviet citizen whose portrait was placed on a Soviet coin during her lifetime.
The following are named after Tereshkova:
crater on the Moon;
- minor planet 1671 Chaika (according to its call sign - “Chaika”);
- streets in different cities, including Balakhna, Balashikha, Vitebsk, Vladivostok, Dankov, Dzerzhinsk, Donetsk, Irkutsk, Ishimbay, Kemerovo, Klin, Korolev, Kostroma, Krasnoyarsk, Lipetsk, Mineralnye Vody, Mytishchi, Nizhny Novgorod, Nikolaev, Novosibirsk, Novocheboksarsk, Orenburg, Penza, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Ulan-Ude, Ulyanovsk, Yaroslavl, avenue in Gudermes, square in Tver, embankment in Evpatoria;
- schools in Yaroslavl (where she studied), in Novocheboksarsk, in Karaganda and in the city of Esik (Almaty region);
- Sports and fitness center in the city of Kursk (Solyanka tract, 16);
- Children's sports center for recreation and recreation of children and adolescents in the Kaliningrad region (45 km from Kaliningrad);
- the Cosmos Museum (not far from her village) and the planetarium in Yaroslavl.
Monument to Valentina Tereshkova in the Bayevsky district of the Altai Territory, not far from the landing site of the first female cosmonaut. Also, a monument to Tereshkova stands on the Alley of Cosmonauts in Moscow. One of the monuments was erected in the city of Lvov, but in Ukraine they propose to demolish it within the framework of the law on the so-called. decommunization.
The annual city athletics relay race for the prize of V.V. Tereshkova is held in Yaroslavl. The Yaroslavl DOSAAF military-patriotic education center bears her name.
The following songs are dedicated to Valentina Tereshkova: “The girl is called a seagull” (music by Alexander Dolukhanyan, lyrics by Mark Lisyansky, performer -), “Valentina” (in Moldavian, music by Dumitru Gheorghita, lyrics by Efim Krimerman, performer -).
Muslim Magomayev - The girl's name is a seagull
Today, April 12, Russia celebrates Cosmonautics Day. Every space launch at that time involved sweat and blood, and the astronauts risked their lives every second of the flight. But how did these people get into space? What happened to them after the flights? It turns out that in the destinies of many of them there were great tragedies, about which everyone is silent.
Pavel Belyaev
The name of cosmonaut Leonov is known to everyone, and everyone can say that this man was the first to go into outer space. But for some reason everyone forgets about cosmonaut Pavel Belyaev. It was he who led the first manned spacewalk.
Cosmonaut Pavel Belyaev was born on June 26, 1925 in the village of Chelishchevo. He graduated from high school in 1942 and went to work as a turner at the Sinarsky Pipe Plant. In 1943, he voluntarily joined the ranks of the Soviet army and was sent to the Yeisk Military Aviation School of Pilots. He graduated from college in 1945.
img.happy-giraffe.ru
As a fighter pilot, he took part in hostilities with Japan as part of the 38th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment of the 12th Attack Air Division of the Pacific Fleet (August - September 1945), then served in aviation units of the USSR Navy.
Since 1956, he studied at the Air Force Academy (now named after Yu. A. Gagarin), from which he graduated in 1959. During his training, he mastered the U-2, Ut-2, Yak-7B, Yak-9, Yak-11, La-11, MiG-15 and MiG-17 aircraft and had a total flight time of more than 500 hours.
kik-sssr.ru
While still studying at the academy, Pavel Belyaev was offered to join the cosmonaut corps. He agreed without hesitation. Already in 1960 he was enrolled in the detachment, where he was elected headman. With great zeal, Belyaev mastered space technology, perfectly studied the ship's hardware, and quickly mastered control skills. A group of future cosmonauts had to undergo a complex set of training. And the most important role in them was given to parachute training. The management believed that these types of skills would be useful for the cadets. In 1964, Belyaev and Leonov had to make a pair of jumps with a delay of thirty seconds. The first jump went well. But when they rose into the sky again, the wind increased. The parachutists jumped, and they began to be carried away from the desired location. Belyaev realized that the landing would be unsuccessful. He pulled the lines, the drift became less, but the speed of descent increased. During landing, Belyaev injured his leg and was sent to the hospital.
Difficult treatment began. Leonov visited the hospital, asking the doctors to return Pavel to duty as soon as possible. Five months passed, and the doctors offered to perform a complex operation on the leg, but they did not give any guarantees. Belyaev decided not to risk it and suggested an alternative - to increase the load on the leg, and thus force the bone to heal. He took dumbbells and stood on his bad leg. The pain was hellish, but the future cosmonaut achieved his goal - he cured his leg. Pavel missed a year of training, but was able to return to the group. To do this, he had to pass 7 qualifying jumps, which he coped with excellently. The authorities appreciated his efforts and allowed him to fly.
www.aviaspace.ru
On March 18, 1965, Pavel Belyaev, a cosmonaut from God, and his partner Alexei Leonov launched from Baikonur on board the Voskhod-2 spacecraft. When they entered orbit, the airlock chamber attached to the ship's hatch began to inflate. Leonov, having passed through it, made the first manned spacewalk. Then the mission didn't go as planned. The astronauts had to cope with seven accidents. Of these, three were life-threatening, there was a danger of explosion, and the control system failed. To switch to manual control mode, Belyaev had to unfasten from his seat. He redirected the ship, adjusted the braking system and returned to his place again.
Such manual control operations had not been carried out previously, and Belyaev performed them for the first time. The astronaut spent 22 seconds on this. But during this time, the ship left the desired trajectory and deviated from the course by 165 kilometers. For this reason, the astronauts had to land in the taiga. Rescuers found them only four hours later.
24smi.org
In order to land the helicopter, rescuers needed to prepare a special area. This took two days. In addition, we had to ski to get to the helicopter. These days became the most difficult for them. It was 30 degrees below zero outside, and their clothes were not adapted to such cold weather. But they managed it. Two days later, Leonov and Belyaev were rescued.
But after such torment, Belyaev’s body weakened greatly. After his first flight into space, he was trained to fly on Soyuz-type spacecraft. In 1965, he was promoted to colonel and received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. On March 25, 1967, due to health reasons, he was removed from training and replaced by Valery Voloshin.
In the last years of his life, Belyaev felt unwell. He suffered from chronic disease of the duodenum, but did not consult a doctor. In December 1969, his condition deteriorated sharply, and on the 23rd he was urgently taken to the main military hospital. Burdenko. On December 24, Belyaev underwent the first operation, and on December 30, a second surgical intervention was performed. However, the astronaut's health continued to deteriorate, and inflammation of the peritoneum and cardiopulmonary failure occurred, which ultimately became the cause of his death. Pavel Ivanovich is buried in Moscow at the Novodevichy cemetery. A crater on the Moon and a small planet (2030 Belyaev) are named after him.
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Pavel Ivanovich is survived by his wife and two daughters. His wife Tatyana Filippovna was left alone in Star City after the death of her husband. Her daughters started their own families, gave birth to children, and the woman was left completely alone. She doesn't like giving interviews and never appears on television. She doesn't go to visit because she's afraid to return to an empty house.
www.kosmonavtika.com
The first man to walk into outer space is now 82 years old. Alexey Leonov has dozens of awards, orders, honorary titles, not only Russian, but also foreign. He has a beloved wife, Svetlana Pavlovna, and a daughter, Oksana.
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Leonov met his wife Svetlana while still studying at an aviation school, and literally within three days he proposed and got married: he had to return to his unit. Svetlana even sewed a wedding dress in just one night. Two years after the wedding, the Leonovs’ eldest daughter, Vika, was born. And in 1967, two years after Leonov returned from space, his second daughter Oksana was born. In 1996, Victoria died, she was only 35 years old. The girl worked at the Main Directorate of Sovfracht of the Ministry of the Navy, and died suddenly during a business trip after contracting hepatitis complicated by pneumonia. Alexey Arkhipovich was grieving the death of his daughter; the rest of his family, including his grandchildren Daniil and Karina, helped him cope.
www.smolnews.ru
This is what Alexey Arkhipovich remembers about his first flight:
When they created a spacewalk vehicle, they had to solve many problems, one of which was related to the size of the hatch. In order for the lid to open completely inward, the cradle would have to be cut. Then I wouldn’t fit into it at the shoulders. And I agreed to reduce the diameter of the hatch. Thus, between the suit and the hatch edge there was a gap of 20 mm on each shoulder.
On Earth, we carried out tests in a pressure chamber at a vacuum corresponding to an altitude of 60 km... In reality, when I went into outer space, it turned out a little differently. The pressure in the suit is about 600 mm, and outside it is 10-9; it was impossible to simulate such conditions on Earth. In the vacuum of space, the suit swelled; neither the stiffeners nor the dense fabric could withstand it. Of course, I assumed that this would happen, but I didn’t think it would be so strong. I tightened all the straps, but the suit bulged so much that my hands came out of my gloves when I grabbed the handrails, and my feet came out of my boots. In this state, of course, I could not squeeze into the airlock hatch. A critical situation arose, and there was no time to consult with the Earth. While I would report to them... while they were conferring... And who would take responsibility? Only Pasha Belyaev saw this, but could not help. And then I, violating all the instructions and without informing the Earth, switched to a pressure of 0.27 atmospheres. This is the second operating mode of the spacesuit. If by this time the nitrogen had not been washed out of my blood, then the nitrogen would have boiled - and that was all... death. I figured that I had been under pure oxygen for an hour and there shouldn’t be any boiling. After I switched to the second mode, everything fell into place.
Out of nerves, he put a movie camera into the airlock and, violating the instructions, went into the airlock not with his feet, but with his head first. Taking hold of the railing, I pushed myself forward. Then I closed the outer hatch and began to turn around, since you still need to enter the ship with your feet. I wouldn’t have been able to do it otherwise, because the lid, which opened inward, ate up 30% of the cabin’s volume. Therefore, I had to turn around (the internal diameter of the airlock is 1 meter, the width of the spacesuit at the shoulders is 68 cm). This is where the greatest load was, my pulse reached 190. I still managed to turn over and enter the ship with my feet, as expected, but I had such a heatstroke that, breaking the instructions and without checking the tightness, I opened the helmet, without closing the hatch behind you. I wipe my eyes with a glove, but I can’t wipe it, as if someone is pouring on my head. Then I had only 60 liters of oxygen for breathing and ventilation, and now “Orlan” has 360 liters... I was the first in history to go out and immediately move 5 meters away. Nobody else did this. But we had to work with this halyard, put it on hooks so that it wouldn’t dangle. There was enormous physical activity.
The only thing I didn’t do on the way out was to take a photo of the ship from the side. I had a miniature Ajax camera that could shoot through a button. It was given to us with the personal permission of the KGB chairman. This camera was controlled remotely by a cable; due to the deformation of the spacesuit, I could not reach it. But I did filming (3 minutes with an S-97 camera), and I was constantly monitored from the ship by two television cameras, but they had low resolution. A very interesting film was later made from these materials.
But the worst thing was when I returned to the ship - the partial pressure of oxygen began to increase (in the cabin), which reached 460 mm and continued to rise. This is at the norm of 160 mm! But 460 mm is an explosive gas, because Bondarenko burned out on this... At first we sat in stupor. Everyone understood, but they could do almost nothing: they completely removed the humidity, lowered the temperature (it became 10-12 °C). And the pressure is growing... The slightest spark - and everything would turn into a molecular state, and we understood this. We were in this state for seven hours, and then we fell asleep... apparently from stress. Then we figured out that I had touched the boost switch with the spacesuit hose... What actually happened? Since the ship was stabilized relative to the Sun for a long time, deformation naturally occurred: on the one hand, cooling to -140 °C, on the other, heating to +150 °C... The hatch closing sensors worked, but a gap remained. The regeneration system began to build up pressure, and oxygen began to increase, we did not have time to consume it... The total pressure reached 920 mm. These several tons of pressure pressed down the hatch, and the pressure growth stopped. Then the pressure began to drop before our eyes.
Now Alexey Leonov is engaged in painting and writing books.
ria.ru
Georgy Grechko
Georgy Grechko completed three space flights during his professional career, the total duration of which is 134 days, 20 hours, 32 minutes and 58 seconds. The astronaut also performed one spacewalk for 1 hour and 28 minutes.
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Georgy Mikhailovich was a candidate for master of sports in motorsports, had 1st category in parachuting (64 jumps), 2nd category in gliding and shooting, 3rd category in airplane sports.
In 1989, he was nominated as a candidate for people's deputies, but at the last moment before the vote itself he withdrew his candidacy in favor of Boris Yeltsin.
From 1977 to 1990, Georgy Grechko hosted the television program “This Fantastic World.” In the 1980s, he was the head of the laboratory at the A. M. Obukhov Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
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Georgy Grechko was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union twice. On the night of April 8 this year, Georgy Grechko died in the 81st hospital named after. Veresaeva in Moscow. He was 86 years old. The preliminary cause of death is heart failure. The funeral took place on April 11 at the Troekurovskoye cemetery in Moscow.
Georgy Grechko was married three times. His first wife was engineer Nina Viktorovna Tutynina. Grechko filed for divorce before the first flight, for which he almost lost this opportunity. After the divorce, he married Maya Grigorievna Kazekina, a foreign language teacher. Grechko’s last wife was the chief physician of the Cosmonautics Federation of the North-Western region, Lyudmila Kirillovna. She is 22 years younger than Georgy Mikhailovich. Grechko is survived by three children and seven grandchildren.
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Valentina Tereshkova
Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova is the world's first female cosmonaut, Hero of the Soviet Union, the only woman in the world to have made a solo space flight, and also the first woman in Russia with the rank of major general.
Valentina Vladimirovna was awarded the titles of Hero of Socialist Labor of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, Hero of Socialist Labor of the People's Republic of Belarus, Hero of Labor of Vietnam and Hero of Labor of the Mongolian People's Republic.
pozdravish.ru
After the first successful flights of Soviet cosmonauts, Sergei Korolev, a spacecraft design engineer, had the idea of launching a female cosmonaut into space. At the beginning of 1962, a search began for applicants according to the following criteria: parachutist, under 30 years of age, up to 170 cm tall and weighing up to 70 kg. Out of hundreds of candidates, five were chosen: Zhanna Yorkina, Tatyana Kuznetsova, Valentina Ponomareva, Irina Solovyova and Valentina Tereshkova.
Immediately after being accepted into the cosmonaut corps, Tereshkova, along with the other girls, was called up for compulsory military service with the rank of privates.
Tereshkova was enrolled in the cosmonaut corps on March 12, 1962 and began training as a student-cosmonaut of the 2nd detachment. On November 29, 1962, she passed her final exams in OKP with excellent marks. Since December 1, 1962, Tereshkova has been a cosmonaut of the 1st detachment of the 1st department. On June 16, 1963, that is, immediately after the flight, she became an instructor-cosmonaut of the 1st detachment and held this position until March 14, 1966.
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During her training, she underwent training to test her body’s resistance to the factors of space flight. The training included a thermal chamber, where she had to be in a flight suit at a temperature of +70 ° C and a humidity of 30%, and a soundproof chamber - a room isolated from sounds, where each candidate had to spend 10 days.
Zero-gravity training took place on the MiG-15. When performing a parabolic slide, weightlessness was established inside the plane for 40 seconds, and there were 3-4 such sessions per flight. During each session, it was necessary to complete the next task: write your first and last name, try to eat, talk on the radio.
Particular attention was paid to parachute training, since the astronaut ejected before landing and landed separately by parachute. Since there was always a risk of the descent vehicle splashing down, training was also carried out on parachute jumps into the sea, in a technological, that is, not adjusted to size, spacesuit.
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Initially, a simultaneous flight of two female crews was planned, but in March 1963 this plan was abandoned, and the task of choosing one of five candidates arose.
When choosing Tereshkova for the role of the first female cosmonaut, in addition to successfully completing training, political issues were also taken into account: Tereshkova was from the workers, while, for example, Ponomareva and Solovyova were from the employees. In addition, Tereshkova's father, Vladimir, died during the Soviet-Finnish War when she was two years old. After the flight, when Tereshkova was asked how the Soviet Union could thank her for her service, she asked to find the place where her father died.
Not the least selection criterion was the candidate’s ability to conduct active social activities - meeting people, speaking in public on numerous trips around the country and the world, demonstrating in every possible way the advantages of the Soviet system.
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Other candidates, with no worse preparation (based on the results of a medical examination and theoretical preparedness of female cosmonaut candidates, Tereshkova was placed in last place) were noticeably inferior to Tereshkova in the qualities necessary for such social activities. Therefore, she was appointed as the main candidate for the flight, I.B. Solovyov as a backup, and V.L. Ponomarev as a reserve.
At the time of Tereshkova's appointment as Vostok 6 pilot, she was 10 years younger than Gordon Cooper, the youngest of the first group of American astronauts. She was only 26 years old.
Tereshkova made her space flight (the world's first flight of a female cosmonaut) on June 16, 1963 on the Vostok-6 spacecraft; it lasted almost three days. The launch took place at Baikonur not from the “Gagarin” site, but from a duplicate one. At the same time, the Vostok-5 spacecraft, piloted by cosmonaut Valery Bykovsky, was in orbit.
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On the day of her flight into space, she told her family that she was leaving for a parachute competition; they learned about the flight from the news on the radio.
Tereshkova’s call sign for the duration of the flight is “Seagull”; the phrase she said before the start: “Hey! Sky! Take off your hat! (modified quote from V. Mayakovsky’s poem “A Cloud in Pants”).
During the flight, Tereshkova could not cope with the tasks of orienting the ship:
- I talked to Tereshkova several times. It feels like she's tired, but she doesn't want to admit it. In the last communication session, she did not answer calls from the Leningrad IP. We turned on the television camera and saw that she was sleeping. I had to wake her up and talk to her about the upcoming landing and manual orientation. She tried twice to orient the ship and honestly admitted that she couldn’t get the pitch orientation right. This circumstance worries us all very much: if we have to land manually, and she cannot orient the ship, then it will not leave orbit.
Later it turned out that the commands issued by the pilot were inverted to the direction of control movement in manual mode (the ship turned in the wrong direction as when trained on the simulator). According to Tereshkova, the problem was the incorrect installation of the control wires: commands were given not to descend, but to raise the spacecraft’s orbit. In automatic mode, the polarity was correct, which made it possible to properly orient and land the ship. Tereshkova remained silent about this incident for more than forty years, because Sergei Korolev asked her not to tell anyone about it.
livejournal.com
According to Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor Vladimir Ivanovich Yazdovsky, who was responsible for the medical support of the Soviet space program at that time, women tolerate the extreme stress of space flight worse on the 14th-18th day of the monthly cycle.
However, due to the fact that the launch of the launch vehicle that put Tereshkova into orbit was delayed for a day, and also, obviously, due to the strong psycho-emotional load when putting the ship into orbit, the flight mode prescribed by the doctors could not be maintained.
Yazdovsky also noted that “Tereshkova, according to telemetry and television monitoring, endured the flight mostly satisfactorily. Negotiations with ground communication stations were sluggish. She sharply limited her movements. She sat almost motionless. She clearly showed changes in her health of a vegetative nature.”
drprof.ru
Despite nausea and physical discomfort, Tereshkova survived 48 orbits around the Earth and spent almost three days in space, where she kept a logbook and took photographs of the horizon, which were later used to detect aerosol layers in the atmosphere.
The Vostok-6 descent module landed safely in the Baevsky district of the Altai Territory.
A few days later, Tereshkova was protested due to a violation of the regime in the area of the landing site: she distributed food supplies from the astronauts’ diet to local residents, and she herself ate local food after three days of fasting.
According to pilot Marina Popovich, after Tereshkova’s flight, Sergei Korolev said to her: “As long as I’m alive, not a single woman will fly into space again.” The next flight of a woman into space, Svetlana Savitskaya, took place 19 years later, in August 1982 (Korolev died in 1966).
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After completing her space flight, Tereshkova entered the Air Force Engineering Academy. Zhukovsky and, having graduated with honors, later became a candidate of technical sciences, professor, and author of more than 50 scientific papers. Tereshkova was ready for a one-way flight to Mars.
After returning from space, Tereshkova received a three-room apartment in Yaroslavl on Golubyatnaya Street (now Tereshkova Street), where she moved with her mother, aunt and her daughter. In 2004, she underwent complex heart surgery, which prevented a heart attack. In 2012, she solemnly celebrated her 75th anniversary in Yaroslavl. After Tereshkova saw all the continents of the Earth from space, she began to dream of visiting Australia. After many years, she managed to fulfill her dream.
Valentina Tereshkova married cosmonaut Andriyan Nikolaev five months after the flight. No one could understand why this particular man became her husband. For many, the only explanation for this unexpected marriage was that Khrushchev himself had betrothed them. He was pushed to this by medical scientists who wanted to continue the research on the human body that had begun in space during and after the flight. In addition, the head of state wanted to show the whole world what “correct” Soviet people are - they do what they need to do and marry the right person.
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A year later, Valentina and Andriyan had a daughter. An event of national importance, because no one knew how the pregnancy would proceed after the space flight and whether the child would be born healthy. Professor E.M. Kastrubin left interesting memories about this:
- In the summer of 1964, the first female cosmonaut, Valentina Tereshkova, entered the institute to give birth. Near the operating room, A. Nikolaev nervously walked along the corridor, he did not talk to anyone and did not ask anything. About an hour later, a black-haired girl was carried past him into the neonatal ward. After the end of anesthesia, the anesthesiologist hesitantly, but according to tradition, patted the famous patient on the cheeks and asked her to open her eyes. Thus ended the difficult story of Valentina Tereshkova finding the happiness of motherhood.
The divorce of the star couple shocked many as much as the wedding. It must be said that it was not easy for them themselves - family quarrels in the cosmonaut corps were then sorted out by numerous commissions. Andriyan Nikolaev never married after his divorce from Tereshkova. He died in 2004 from a heart attack. Valentina Tereshkova remarried Yuliy Shaposhnikov, who died in 1999.
- In April 2017, the film “Time of the First” directed by Dmitry Kiselev was released. Events take place in 1965. The film perfectly shows how the Soviet Union won victory in the exploration and exploration of outer space.
- The first cosmonauts from the USSR - Pavel Belyaev and Alexey Leonov - flew into space 80 days earlier than the cosmonauts from the United States mastered orbit. Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov personally supervised the filming and made sure that the film conveyed the real history of that time as accurately as possible.
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Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova
The world's first woman astronaut.
She was born on March 6, 1937 in the village of Maslennikovo, Yaroslavl region. In 1960 she graduated from the Technical College of Light Industry in Yaroslavl, then worked in her specialty and participated in Komsomol work. After the first successful flights of Soviet cosmonauts, Sergei Korolev had the idea of launching a female cosmonaut into space. The search for applicants began in 1962, the criteria were as follows: parachutist, age up to 30 years, height up to 170 centimeters, weight up to 70 kilograms. Out of hundreds of candidates, five were chosen, one of whom was Valentina Tereshkova. In March 1962, she was enlisted in the cosmonaut corps of the Air Force Center for the position of cosmonaut student and called up for military service with the rank of private.
On June 16, 1963, on the Vostok-6 spacecraft, Tereshkova made the world's first space flight by a female cosmonaut, spending almost three days in orbit.Valentina hid her preparations for the flight from her family so as not to disturb her. On the day of her first flight into space, she said that she was leaving for a parachute competition; they learned about the news on the radio.
On June 22, 1963, Valentina Tereshkova was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.In 1969, she graduated with honors from the Zhukovsky Academy and received the qualification “pilot-cosmonaut-engineer”. In 1995, she was awarded the rank of major general.
She is the only woman in Russia to hold the rank of general.Before retiring in 1997, she worked in various positions in the cosmonaut corps; since 1997, Tereshkova has been a senior researcher at the Cosmonaut Training Center. All her life Valentina Vladimirovna was involved in social activities and took an active life position. She was a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, and headed the Committee of Soviet Women.
In 2008-2011, Valentina Tereshkova was a deputy of the Yaroslavl Region Duma from the United Russia party, and since 2011 - a deputy of the State Duma of Russia. Candidate of Technical Sciences, professor, author of more than 50 scientific works - Valentina Tereshkova was awarded many orders and medals, both from Russia and other countries. She is an Honorary Citizen of the cities of Kaluga and Yaroslavl, as well as cities of Great Britain, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Italy, France, Slovakia... Streets in many Russian cities, school No. 32 in the city of Yaroslavl, where she studied, a crater on the Moon and minor planet 1671 Chaika. There are also 2 monuments to Tereshkova: on the Alley of Cosmonauts in Moscow and in the Bayevsky district of the Altai Territory, on the territory of which she landed. Valentina Tereshkova also took part in the opening ceremony of the XXII Winter Olympic Games, held on February 7, 2014 in Sochi - among the eight selected people of Russia, she carried the Olympic flag.
Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin
Soviet pilot, April 12, 1961 became the first person in the world to fly into space. On the Vostok spacecraft, he made an orbital flight around the Earth for the first time in world history, opening the era of manned space flights.
Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin was born on March 9, 1934 in the village of Klushino, Smolensk region. I went to school in 1941, but due to the German occupation, I continued my studies only in 1943. After moving to the city of Gzhatsk, he finished the sixth grade and entered a vocational school. In 1951, Yuri entered the industrial technical school in Saratov. He began visiting the flying club, and a year later he made his first flight on a Yak-18 aircraft. In 1957 he graduated from the Orenburg Pilot School. Having passed a medical commission, in March 1960 he became one of the candidates for cosmonaut. After the choice fell on him, the greatest event happened in the life of Yuri Gagarin.
On April 12, 1961, the Vostok spacecraft with Gagarin on board went into space, making a revolution around the Earth. Thanks to Khrushchev, immediately after the flight, Gagarin's rank was promoted from senior lieutenant to major. They organized a magnificent meeting for him in Moscow. Then Gagarin made several trips to different countries (Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Finland, England). Subsequently, he was appointed senior cosmonaut instructor, and then commander of the cosmonaut corps. Since 1963, he was the deputy head of the Center for Flight and Space Training and the head of the flight and space training department, as well as an understudy for the Soyuz-1 cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov. Gagarin also actively participated in the socio-political life of the country, being a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the 6th and 7th convocations, a member of the Komsomol Central Committee, president of the Soviet-Cuban Friendship Society, and an honorary member of the Finland - Soviet Union Society. Yuri Gagarin was an extremely popular personality not only in our country, but also in the world. And today people remember his charming smile. In fact, he became the country's calling card and ambassador of peace. But he dreamed of heaven. And flights were resumed. He sought to regain his qualifications as a fighter pilot.Hero of the Soviet Union, Honored Master of Sports of the USSR Yuri Alekseevich was awarded the Order of Lenin, medals and other awards, including foreign ones.On March 27, 1968, the first cosmonaut Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin, making his next scheduled flight on a UTI MiG-15 aircraft, which also had Colonel Vladimir Seregin on board, crashed near the village of Novoselovo, Vladimir Region. Both pilots were killed. Urns containing the ashes of Gagarin and Seryogin were buried in the Kremlin wall on Red Square in Moscow. His hometown today bears his name - Gagarin; streets and avenues in many Russian cities are named after the cosmonaut, and monuments are also installed.
Alexey Arkhipovich Leonov
Born on May 30, 1934 in a Siberian village 600 kilometers from Kemerovo. Alexey was the ninth child in the family. In 1938, he and his mother moved to Kemerovo. At the age of 9 I went to primary school. After 4 years, the family moved to the father’s place of work in the city of Kaliningrad (formerly Königsberg). Even at school, Leonov was interested in aircraft technology and carefully studied the structure of aircraft, the basics of flight theory, etc. In 1953, the young man graduated from high school and received a good matriculation certificate.
That same year, Alexey entered the pilot school, which was located in Kremenchug, without much difficulty. After her, he studied at the Higher School of Fighter Pilots in Chuguev in Ukraine. From 1957 to 1959 he flew in combat regiments. In 1960, Leonov passed a tough selection process and was enrolled in the cosmonaut corps.
In March 1965, together with P.I. Belyaev Alexey Arkhipovich flew on the Voskhod-2 spacecraft as a co-pilot.During the flight, which lasted one day, 2 hours, 2 minutes and 17 seconds, for the first time in world history, a person went into outer space, moved away from the spacecraft at a distance of up to five meters and spent 12 minutes 9 seconds outside the airlock chamber in outer space.This event gave rise to a new direction of human activity in space.
From 1967 to 1970, he led the lunar group of astronauts.
At the beginning of 1973 The Academy of Sciences of the USSR and NASA (USA) organized a unique experiment in space - a joint flight of the Soviet Soyuz-19 spacecraft and the American Apollo. For the first time in history, spacecraft were docked, and many astrophysical, biomedical, technological and geophysical experiments were carried out. The flight lasted more than five days and marked the beginning of a new era in space exploration. The USSR was represented by pilot-cosmonauts A. A. Leonov and V. N. Kubasov. Alexey Arkhipovich Leonov was appointed commander of the Soyuz spacecraft.
From the US side - astronauts T. Stafford, V. Brand, D. Slayton.
In July 1975, a joint flight was carried out.
Over the years of scientific and practical work and during space flights, A. A. Leonov carried out a huge amount of research and experiments. He was twice awarded the high title of Hero of the Soviet Union (1965, 1975), as well as the titles of laureate of the USSR State Prize (1981) and laureate of the Lenin Komsomol Prize.
A. A. Leonov was awarded two Orders of Lenin, the Order of the Red Star, “For Service to the Motherland in the Armed Forces”, III degree. He was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor of Bulgaria, Hero of Labor of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. He was also awarded a large gold medal "For services to the development of science and to humanity", a medal named after Z. Nejedly (Czechoslovakia), two large gold medals "Space", two de Lavaux medals, a gold medal named after Yu. A. Gagarin, a large gold medal named after K.E. Tsiolkovsky of the USSR Academy of Sciences, many other foreign awardspennies and medals. He was awarded the K. Harmon International Aviation Prize. He is an honorary citizen of 30 cities around the world: Vologda, Kaliningrad, Kemerovo, Perm, Chuguev,Kremenchug and others. One of the craters on the Moon is named after A. A. Leonov.
Alexey Arkhipovich was elected a full member of the International Academy of Astronautics, an academician of the Russian Academy of Astronautics, co-chairman of the International Association of Space Flight Participants (1985-1999), and has an academic degree of Candidate of Technical Sciences.
My grandfather, a hereditary peasant with an incomplete school education (the war got in the way), was an unusually intelligent person. And when I, as a boy, told him about Tereshkova, about the first woman in space and so on, he just snorted contemptuously. He said that a sack of potatoes would have coped with such a flight no worse - they say they stuffed Tereshkova into a rocket like a simple load, launched her into orbit, and that’s all her achievements. And this was not sexism, not disdain for the achievements of women from the man - he spoke about Savitskaya quite respectfully. How he knew such details in the Soviet years - I don’t know, but Dnepropetrovsk in those days was not the last settlement from space, perhaps some rumors reached him.
But, like, 80 years and all that... one could pretend that everything is fine, but it doesn’t work out.
Space pioneer Valentina Tereshkova has forever secured her place in the history books. In June 1963, it circled the Earth 48 times. However, the astronaut was unable to achieve any significant achievements, since during her three-day flight she ignored the instructions of the chief designer of space technology, Sergei Korolev. On March 6, Tereshkova turns 80 years old.
From a propaganda point of view, the flight of “Chaika” - that was Tereshkova’s call sign - was a serious breakthrough. After the launch of the first satellite in 1957, as well as after the flight of Yuri Gagarin in 1961, this achievement managed to deal the US another blow to the United States in the struggle for supremacy in outer space. Nevertheless, from a scientific point of view, this flight brought only disappointments, and with them - catastrophic consequences for other cosmonaut candidates.
Space sickness and programming errors
Korolev allegedly said in a narrow circle: “With me, there won’t be a single woman in space again.” Moreover, the word “woman” was most likely invented by journalists so that this much more rude phrase could be published at all. The main purpose of Tereshkova’s flight was to study the influence of space environmental conditions on the functioning of the female body, to improve the control system of the Vostok spacecraft, as well as to photograph the Earth and the Moon. In parallel with Tereshkova, Valery Bykovsky flew around the Earth on the Vostok-5 spacecraft.
However, the astronaut had to deal with space sickness from the very beginning, and, incidentally, she hid this fact from the ground control team. Tereshkova did not follow instructions for orienting the capsule using the manual control system, did not respond to call signs for hours, did not eat according to the planned diet, and complained of the oppressive cramped conditions in the capsule. She could not take notes because she had broken her pencils in the bustle.
Neglect of prohibitions
In addition, she quickly realized that the flight path of the capsule of her Vostok 6 spacecraft was programmed incorrectly. Only on the second day of the flight did she receive the correct data. If this had not happened, her flight could have ended in disaster, which Tereshkova admitted only ten years later. Korolev allegedly begged her not to talk about this technical error.
In addition, cosmonaut Valery Bykovsky made his flight around the Earth in a lower orbit, so that visual contact between the two spacecraft was impossible and radio communication capabilities were limited.
To the horror of the doctor, Tereshkova, who landed by parachute 620 kilometers northeast of Karaganda (Kazakhstan), distributed her space food to local residents, while she herself ate potatoes with onions and drank kumiss, which was strictly prohibited.
Tereshkova hid a large bruise on her nose, received during a parachute landing, under a thick layer of makeup. The next day, the landing was staged for filming and photography, which subsequently flew around the world.
For Korolev, the problems and malfunctions that arose during Tereshkova’s flight became a pleasant confirmation of his prejudice, which persists in Russia to this day, that women, in fact, have nothing to do in space. That is why the first squad of cosmonauts of the USSR, which included 20 candidates for the first flight into space, the so-called “Gagarin set”, consisted exclusively of men. In the end, only four women astronauts went into space. In the active cosmonaut corps, along with 33 men, there is only one woman, and she is for the sake of justification.
After Tereshkova’s flight, chief designer of space technology Sergei Korolev disbanded the female cosmonaut corps and canceled all planned further flights of women into space. Only in 1982, 16 years after his death, Svetlana Savitskaya made her flight, becoming the second Russian woman in space, in response to the US announcement of plans to send a woman into space in the person of Sally Ride.
Tereshkova goes into politics
After her flight, Tereshkova avoided the press so as not to have to lie. For this she was forced to come to terms with the fame of a cutesy person. She finally found her true calling in politics. Generously awarded, she enjoyed success primarily in the countries of the Eastern Bloc; she graduated, like Gagarin, from the Air Force Engineering Academy. N. E. Zhukovsky and quickly made a career. She became a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and a member of the CPSU Central Committee, head of the Soviet Women's Committee, as well as a member of numerous international associations.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, she headed the Russian Center for International Scientific and Cultural Cooperation. In 1995, Tereshkova became the first woman in Russian history to hold the rank of aviation major general.
"Benefactor" Valentina
In 2008, after two unsuccessful attempts to obtain a mandate as a State Duma deputy for her contribution to the development of social movements, Tereshkova became a deputy of the regional Duma of her hometown of Yaroslavl from the United Russia party, and soon became deputy chairman. Three years later she managed to move to the State Duma in Moscow.
She decisively fights for the interests of her voters - be it gasification in the Yaroslavl region or strengthening the banks of the Volga in the Rybinsk region. Previously, requests were sent to the Central Committee, but today Tereshkova appeals directly to Putin. The President certainly understands what he owes to Tereshkova. Some of the fame of the cosmonautics icon, still very popular in Russia, goes to him too.
450 red roses for the President
Tereshkova herself makes virtually no public statements about Putin and his party. But for Putin’s 64th birthday, she sent him a bouquet of 450 red roses on behalf of all State Duma deputies. Tereshkova thanked the president for his “tireless work” and promised, just like in Soviet times, to work with him for the benefit of the people.
Shortly before his death in 2011, Boris Chertok found conciliatory words for Tereshkova. The Soviet scientist, who for many years was Korolev’s closest associate, hinting at her unsuccessful flight, told her that in “social and state activities” she had achieved “truly cosmic heights.”
