The first in the space

**Admin** Thu Dec 08, 2011 12:29 am

The first woman in the space

Valentina Tereshkova

Valentina Tereshkova ; (born March 6, 1937) is a retired Soviet cosmonaut, and was the first woman in space. She was selected out of more than four hundred applicants, and then out of five finalists, to pilot Vostok 6 on the 16 June, 1963, becoming both the first woman and the first civilian to fly in space,[1] as she was only honorarily inducted into the USSR's Air Force as a condition on joining the Cosmonaut Corps. During her three-day mission, she performed various tests on herself to collect data on the female body's reaction to spaceflight.
Before being recruited as a cosmonaut, Tereshkova was a textile-factory assembly worker and an amateur parachutist. 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. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, she retired from politics, but remains revered as a hero in post-Soviet Russia.
The first in the space Valentina+tereshkova

The first in the space Valentina+tereshkova

**Admin** Thu Dec 08, 2011 1:28 am

Laika (Russian: Лайка, literally meaning "Barker"; c. 1954 – November 3, 1957) was a Soviet space dog that
became the first animal to orbit the Earth – as well as the first animal to die in orbit.
As little was known about the impact of spaceflight on living creatures at the time of Laika's mission, and the technology to de-orbit had not yet been developed, there was no expectation of Laika's survival. Some scientists believed humans would be unable to survive the launch or the conditions of outer space, so engineers viewed flights by non-human animals as a necessary precursor to human missions.[1] Laika, a stray dog, originally named Kudryavka (Russian: Кудрявка Little Curly), underwent training with two other dogs, and was eventually chosen as the occupant of the Soviet spacecraft Sputnik 2 that was launched into outer space on November 3, 1957.
Laika likely died within hours after launch from overheating,[2] possibly caused by a failure of the central R-7 sustainer to separate from the payload.[3] The true cause and time of her death was not made public until 2002; instead, it was widely reported that she died when her oxygen ran out on day six,[4] or as Soviet government initially claimed, she was euthanised prior to oxygen depletion. The experiment aimed to prove that a living passenger could survive being launched into orbit and endure weightlessness, paving the way for human spaceflight and providing scientists with some of the first data on how living organisms react to spaceflight environments.
On April 11, 2008, Russian officials unveiled a monument to Laika. A small monument in her honour was built near

the military research facility in Moscow which prepared Laika's flight to space. It features a dog standing on top of

a rocket.[1][5]