Soviet authorities ‘worried’ about female cosmonauts

Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman and civilian to travel into space, opened a huge exhibition of Soviet spacecraft in London yesterday, the centrepiece of which is the actual craft which carried her back from orbit in 1963. Not only did they put the first man, Yuri Gagarin, in space, but also the first woman.

The exhibition, Cosmonauts: Birth of the Space Age, runs at the Science Museum until March.

The BBC’s science correspondent, Pallab Ghosh, went to meet her.

“I am very resourceful, as any woman would be”, Tereshkova said with a mysterious smile.

Dr. Tereshkova called the 2.6 ton craft, which shows the scorch marks from its 16,750mph re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, “my best and most attractive friend”. She had more pressing concerns to deal with, though. Compared to that, “forgetting the toothbrush was nothing”, she said.

“That was a real mistake”, she recalled. Tereshkova jumped out in a parachute at 7,000 metres altitude.

“Birth of the Space Age” is billed as the greatest exhibition of Soviet spacecraft and artefacts ever to be seen outside Russian Federation .

The exhibition is dedicated to Soviet exploration of the outer 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.

“‘Cosmonauts’ is a once-in-a-lifetime exhibition that has taken years of dedication and skill to make a reality”, said Ian Blatchford, the director of the Science Museum.

“We are borrowing things that that our Russian colleagues really do think of as their crown jewels – and nearly none have ever left Russia”, said Blatchford.

The hardy Russian only realized she was missing a vital part of her personal hygiene supplies when she was 144 miles away from the surface of the Earth orbiting our planet from up high.

The turning point came in 1969 when United States astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon.

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.