Friday 25 July 2014

First women




Svetlana did 
the first spacewalk 
30 years ago today.
Svetlana Yevgenyevna Savitskaya is a former Soviet aviator and cosmonaut who flew aboard Soyuz T-7 in 1982, becoming the second woman in space some 19 years after Valentina Tereshkova.
She became the first woman to perform a space walk on July 25, 1984. She conducted an EVA* outside the Salyut 7 space station for 3 hours 35 minutes during which she cut and welded metals in space along with her colleague Vladimir Dzhanibekov. Of the 57 Soviet/Russian spacewalkers through 2010, she is the only female.
She was twice awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union title. The asteroid 4118 Sveta is named for her.


 
*EVA: Extra-vehicular activity is any activity done by an astronaut or cosmonaut outside a spacecraft beyond the Earth's appreciable atmosphere.






Valentina, first woman in space.
Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova 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.
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.