Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova was born in 1937 in Central Russia. A skilled parachutist, she was selected to be the unaccompanied pilot of the Vostok 6 space mission. On the morning of June 16, 1963 at the age of 26 she blasted into space with the callsign of Chaika. She spent three days in space and orbited the earth 48 times. In 2000, Russian President Vladimir Putin awarded her the Greatest Woman Achiever of the Century.

Once you’ve been in space, you appreciate how small and fragile the Earth is. -Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova