page_title: Valentina Tereshkova
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Valentina Tereshkova / Legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: Vintage Soviet era Russian doll celebrating Valentina Tereshkova
context_page_description: Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova is a member of the Russian State Duma, engineer, and former cosmonaut. She is the first and youngest woman to have flown in space with a solo mission on the Vostok 6 on 16 June 1963. She orbited the Earth 48 times, spent almost three days in space, and remains the only woman to have been on a solo space mission.
  Before her selection for the Soviet space program, Tereshkova was a textile factory worker and an amateur skydiver. She joined the Air Force as part of the Cosmonaut Corps and was commissioned as an officer after completing her training. After the dissolution of the first group of female cosmonauts in 1969, Tereshkova remained in the space program as a cosmonaut instructor. She later graduated from the Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy and re-qualified for spaceflight but never went to space again. She retired from the Air Force in 1997 having attained the rank of major general.
  Tereshkova was a prominent member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, holding various political offices including being a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet from 1974 to 1989.
context_section_description: Novopromyshna Square in Tver was renamed Tereshkova Square in 1963.
  In 1967, Gregory Postnikov created a sculpture of Tereshkova for Cosmonaut Alley in Moscow. There is a monument in Bayevsky District of Altai Territory, Siberia, close to her landing place of 53°N, 80°E. In August 1970, Tereshkova was among the first group of living people to have a lunar crater named after them. Tereshkova crater is located on the far side of the Moon.
  None of the other four in Tereshkova's early group flew and, in October 1969, the pioneering female cosmonaut group was dissolved. Even though there were plans for further flights by women, it took 19 years until the second woman, Svetlana Savitskaya, flew into space.
  In 1997, London-based electronic pop group Komputer released a song entitled "Valentina" which gives a more-or-less direct account of her career as a cosmonaut. It was released as a single and appears on their album The World of Tomorrow. The 2000 album Vostok 6 by Kurt Swinghammer is a concept album about Tereshkova. The 2015 album The Race for Space by Public Service Broadcasting also has a song featuring the Smoke Fairies entitled "Valentina". In the same year, Findlay Napier's album VIP: Very Interesting Persons included a song "Valentina", written in her honour by Napier and Boo Hewerdine. In 2015, a short film entitled Valentina's Dream was released by Meat Bingo Productions. The film stars Rebecca Front as Tereshkova and is based on an interview by the former cosmonaut where she expressed a desire to journey to Mars.
  The Cosmos Museum was opened 25 January 1975 near Yaroslavl. Among its exhibits is a replica of her childhood home. The city library was named after her in 2013. The school she attended as a child was renamed for her. A planetarium in Yaroslavl was built and named for her in 2011. The International Women of the Year association named her as the "greatest woman achiever of the 20th century". Tereshkova was a torchbearer of the 2008 Summer Olympics torch relay in Saint Petersburg and the 2014 Winter Olympics torch relay in Sochi.
  Streets in Ukraine that bore Tereshkova's name have been renamed due to her support of Russia's military actions against Ukraine and it was done in accordance with the country's 2015 decommunisation law. A proposal was also brought forward in 2015 to move a monument to Tereshkova in Lviv, Ukraine to the Territory of Terror Memorial Museum. Monuments of communist leaders are removed from the public and placed in the museum as a part of decommunization efforts.
caption: Soviet-era matryoshka doll celebrating Tereshkova
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