Vostok 6

Vostok 6

Spacecraft· OKB-1 (USSR)inactive

Vostok 6 — Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space, flying solo for nearly three days in 1963.

Open in 3D viewSee Vostok 6 in the live, interactive 3D map

Key facts

Distance from Sun
1.01 AU
Status
Completed
Launched
1963

Mission & specifications

Mission

Operator
OKB-1 (USSR)
Launched
June 16, 1963
Status
Completed

Trajectory

Distance from the Sun
1.01 AU
Distance from Earth
396,651 km
Distance from Venus
0.646 AU

Mission

Vostok 6 carried Valentina Tereshkova into orbit as the first woman in space, a milestone the Soviet Union reached two decades before any other nation. Launched on 16 June 1963, Tereshkova was an unlikely astronaut: a twenty-six-year-old textile-factory worker and keen amateur parachutist, selected in part because Vostok cosmonauts had to eject and parachute to the ground, a skill she already had. Flying under the call sign 'Chaika' — Seagull — she spent almost three days aloft, circling the Earth around forty-eight times, more time in space than all the American astronauts who had flown to that point put together. Her flight was launched while a second cosmonaut, Valery Bykovsky, was already in orbit aboard Vostok 5, so for a time two Soviet spacecraft flew at once, passing within a few kilometres of each other. The mission was not without difficulty — Tereshkova reported that an error in the craft's orientation programme could have sent it climbing away from Earth rather than home, a fault corrected from the ground — but she re-entered safely and, like every Vostok pilot, ejected to parachute down, landing in the Altai region of Siberia. The flight was a propaganda triumph, yet it did not open the way for others as many hoped: no woman flew in space again for nineteen years, until Svetlana Savitskaya in 1982, and Tereshkova remains to this day the only woman ever to have flown a solo space mission. She later became a prominent public figure in the Soviet Union and Russia.

  1. 1963Launch from BaikonurLaunch

    Vostok 6 lifts off two days after Vostok 5, putting two crewed craft in orbit at once.

  2. 1963First woman in spaceMilestone

    Valentina Tereshkova, call sign 'Chaika', becomes the first woman to fly in space.

  3. 1963Almost three days aloftOrbiter

    She circles Earth about 48 times, logging more flight time than all US astronauts to date combined.

  4. 1963Parachute landing in the AltaiLanding

    Tereshkova ejects and parachutes to the ground, as every Vostok cosmonaut did.

  5. 1982No woman flies again for nineteen yearsMilestone

    No space programme flies another woman until Svetlana Savitskaya in 1982; Tereshkova remains the only woman to have flown a solo mission.

Images

The preserved Vostok 6 descent capsule (Science Museum, London)
Andrew Gray / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space
RIA Novosti archive / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Wikimedia Commons

Images from open archives · credit shown per image