Tereshkova was speaking exclusively to The Telegraph at an event to launch Cosmonauts: Birth of the Space Age at the Science Museum in London. But they forgot to pack one very important thing of the kit i.e. a toothbrush for a female pioneering cosmonaut.
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Valentina Tereshkova is a member of the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian legislature, and an application for Unesco World Heritage status would need to be made by that her country’s government. “I had my toothpaste, and I had my hand, and I had water”.
Much more serious was a problem with the capsule on her return journey. “Now that was a mistake”, Tereshkova recalls.
Luckily, ground engineers managed to fix the spacecraft’s trajectory, and it began descending to earth at 27,000 kilometres an hour. Tereshkova parachuted safely to the surface from seven kilometers up.
The exhibition, Cosmonauts: Birth of the Space Age, runs at the Science Museum until March.
The contribution of Russian Federation to space exploration can not go unnoticed as it is a good example of human ambition.
– The capsule that launched the first woman into space, the most complete Soviet lunar lander still in existence and the 80-year-old original drawings of a Russian rocket pioneer are among the more than 150 rare Soviet-era space relics now on display in London.
On June 16, 1963, Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in the history of mankind to visit space.
Often classified top secret for decades and many from private collections and archives, the collection demonstrates the initial supremacy of the Soviet Union in the 20th century space race.
Science Museum director Ian Blatchford said it was one of the biggest ever exhibitions at the institution and political relations between the nations had made it challenging.
“An incredible achievement, not given full respect”, he said.
Curator Doug Millard described the drama: “She noticed the orientation of her craft was way out and told mission control that if it wasn’t fixed, when she applied the brakes to start her descent it would do the opposite and fire her into a higher orbit – where she would undoubtedly die”.
The turning point came in 1969 when U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon.
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On Krikalyov’s first mission to the MIR space station in 1991, he was stranded for nearly four extra months as the Soviet Union collapsed.
