Putin appoints all-male cosmonauts for Spaceflight Training

The six newly-appointed members of Russia's cosmonaut corps pose with the chief of the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City. 

From left to right: Oleg Blinov, Nikolai Chub, Sergei Korsakov, Yuri Lonchakov, Dimitri Petelin, Andrei Fedyaev, Pyotr Dubrov.

Credit: Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center

Six new cosmonauts joined the ranks of Russia's space agency on Monday (June 16), two short of the eight candidates who started basic training for the job two years ago.

Among the two who did not make the cut was the group's only woman. By coincidence, the announcement came 51 years to day after Russia launched the world's first female cosmonaut into space.

Since then, only two more Russian women have flown into orbit, with the fourth set to launch later this year.

An interagency commission including representatives from Russia's federal space agency Roscosmos, as well as the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City and from the Russian aerospace companies RSC Energia and Khrunichev approved the six men to be the 2012 class of test-cosmonauts.

As a group, they will next begin training for spaceflights to become eligible for crew assignments.

"I congratulate your successfully passing the cosmonaut training course and passing the state [final] exam," former cosmonaut Yuri Lonchakov, the chief of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center, told the graduates.

The six include Oleg Blinov, Nikolai Chub, Pyotr Dubrov, Andrei Fedyaev, Sergei Korsakov and Dimitri Petelin. The group ranges in age from 30 to 36.

They're all mechanical or software engineers, with the exception of Fedyaev, who is a military pilot.

Five of the cosmonauts hail from Russia. Petelin was born in Kustanai, Kazakhstan, where landing ceremonies have been held for crews returning from the International Space Station.

Among the two candidates who did not qualify was Ignat Ignatov, a 32 year old engineer who had previously worked for eight years as a neutral buoyancy spacewalk instructor at the cosmonaut training center.

In April, it was reported that Ignatov had failed a medical exam and as such, was considered unfit for further training.

Anna Kikina is seen taking part in water survival training as one of the eight cosmonaut candidates selected in 2012. 

In June 2014, Kikina was not among the group’s six members to advance to spaceflight training.

Credit: Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center

Anna Kikina, 29, was also absent from the graduation for reasons that were not stated.

An engineer and economist, she was working at a radio station in Siberia at the time of her selection for basic training.

Had she qualified to continue her training, Kikina stood the chance to join Valentina Tereshkova, Svetlana Savitskaya and Yelena Kondakova as among the few Russian woman to fly in space.

Yelena Serova, who was selected in 2006, is scheduled to launch on her first mission in September.

Serova's flight to the International Space Station will make her only the 58th women in history to leave the Earth out of the more than 500 worldwide space explorers.

Roscosmos began recruiting for this cosmonaut class in January 2012, opening the process to the general Russian public for the first time in the country's history.

Out of the total of 304 applications received, 51 were deemed eligible from which the eight were selected.

The addition of the six new cosmonauts on Monday brings the Russian corps to a total of 46 active members.

Yelena Serova: First Russian ISS Cosmonaut in Two decades

Yelena Serova will spend six months at the ISS.

Russia will send a female cosmonaut into space for the first time in two decades next year, an official at Russia's Star City space training centre said Wednesday.

Yelena Serova, 36 and a professional cosmonaut, "is getting ready for a space flight in the second half of 2014," said Alexei Temerov, an official at Russia's Star City space training centre.

Russia will this year celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first woman's trip to space.

The feat was accomplished by Valentina Tereshkova on June 16, 1963, and was followed by that of another Soviet cosmonaut, Svetlana Savitskaya, who became the first woman to do a space walk.

But while NASA regularly sends female astronauts to work at the International Space Station (ISS), there has been only one Russian woman to fly to space since the early 1980s, Yelena Kondakova.

Kondakova spent five months in space on the since-retired Mir station in 1994-1995. She also travelled aboard the US Space Shuttle in 1997.

Yelena Serova will spend six months at the ISS, Temerov said.

"Her work programme at the ISS will not be anything extraordinary. It will be the usual research programme. A space walk is not planned," he added.

A second woman currently in training, 28-year-old Anna Kikina, has joined the cosmonaut program after becoming one of eight people selected in last year's recruitment drive.

NASA ISS Astronaut Karen Nyberg honours Valentina Tereshkova, First Woman in Space - Video

Current ISS crewmember Karen LuJean Nyberg recorded a special message to commemorate the 50th anniversary of cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova's June 13th 1963 space flight. 

Credit: NASA

Valentina Tereshkova became first woman in space; Fifty years ago

On June 16, 1963, Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to fly into space in a scientific feat that was a major propaganda coup for the Soviet Union.

Two years after Yuri Gagarin's historic first manned flight, Tereshkova blasted off in a Vostok-6 spaceship, becoming a national heroine at the age of 26.

She remains the only woman ever to have made a solo space flight.

In April 1962, officials narrowed down the candidates for the flight to five. In a top-secret process, they picked two engineers, one school teacher, one typist and one factory worker who had performed 90 parachute jumps: this was Tereshkova.

After seven months of intensive training, they chose Tereshkova, who grew up in a peasant family and was a Communist Youth (Komsomol) leader at her textile factory in the historic city of Yaroslavl, around 280 kilometres (174 miles) from Moscow.

Tereshkova was not allowed to confide even in family members, who only learnt of her exploit when Moscow announced it to the entire world.

When she blasted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, another Soviet spaceship, Vostok-5, was already in orbit for two days, piloted by cosmonaut Valery Bykovsky.

During her three-day mission, Tereshkova circled Earth 48 times. On the first day, she communicated with Bykovsky and even sang him songs.

Their communication was then interrupted as the two spaceships moved further away from each other.

Her flight experienced numerous glitches which were only made public after the fall of the Soviet Union.

"A problem appeared on the first day of the flight," Tereshkova said at a press conference in Star City, home to a cosmonaut training centre, earlier this month.

"Due to a technical error, the spaceship was programmed not for a landing but for taking the ship into a higher orbit," she said, meaning that the ship was heading further and further from Earth.

The error was corrected, but chief constructor Sergei Korolyov asked Tereshkova not to tell anyone.
"I kept the secret for 30 years," she said.

Tereshkova wrote in her official report that her spacesuit hurt her leg and that her helmet weighed down her shoulders and scratched her head.

She also said she vomited during the flight.

This information was also kept under wraps so as not to spoil the triumph of the first woman in space.

Tereshkova's landing also prompted concerns at mission control.

She had difficulty in guiding her spaceship and her communications were cut off just before descent began, Soviet general Nikolai Kamanin, who was in charge of the space sector at the time, revealed later.

Tereshkova catapulted out of her space capsule—as was then standard procedure—and parachuted down to land in Altai in southern Siberia.

But mission control did not know Tereshkova's location for two hours after she landed, spaceship constructor Boris Chertok admitted in his memoirs.

Rescuers finally found her tens of kilometres away from the expected spot.

Tereshkova has said in interviews that during the landing her nose smashed against the visor of her helmet and she had to cover up the bruise with make-up at official ceremonies.

After her accomplishment, the second woman to go into space in 1982 was also from the Soviet Union, Svetlana Savitskaya. In 1983 the first American woman, Sally Ride, followed.

Since then more than 40 women from the US have gone into space, but just one other Russian, Yelena Kondakova, in 1994 and 1997.

Doctor Yelena Dobrokvashina trained for 14 years for space and was set to take part in an all-female mission with Savitskaya that was eventually dropped.

"It was probably because of male chauvinism," Dobrokvashina, now employed at the Institute of Medical and Biological Problems that works with cosmonauts, told reporters.

"When we were training at Star City, the space industry chiefs were divided: some supported the all-female project, while others could not stand the idea."

Now another would-be cosmonaut, Yelena Serova, 36, is training for a six-month mission to the International Space Station next year.

Speaking to reporters, she called Tereshkova "a heroic personality, the woman of the century".

"If all goes well and my flight goes ahead, that will be a signal to encourage more and more women to try their strength in space," she said.

Like Gagarin, Tereshkova made just one space flight.

Several months afterwards, she married a cosmonaut, Andriyan Nikolayev. Their marriage was "probably useful for politics and science", wrote General Kamanin.

In 1964 she gave birth to a daughter Yelena. The couple later divorced and Tereshkova remarried.

After occupying various honorific roles during the Soviet period, at 76 Tereshkova is a lawmaker for the ruling United Russia party.

But the adventurous spirit remains: she said this month that she would be "ready" to fly to Mars, even if it were a one-way trip.

First woman in space ready for 'one-way flight to Mars'

Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova is seen during a training session aboard a Vostok spacecraft simulator on January 17, 1964.

Tereshkova, the first woman to go to space, said on Friday she was ready to score another coup and fly to Mars, even if it would be just a one-way trip.

Russia's Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman to go to space, said on Friday she was ready to score another coup and fly to Mars, even if it would be just a one-way trip.

"Mars is my favourite planet," the 76-year old told a news conference in Zvyozdny Gorodok (Star City) outside Moscow, home to a cosmonaut training centre.

Tereshkova, who became a national heroine at the tender age of 26 when she made a solo space flight in 1963, said she had been part of the group who studied the possibility of going to the Red Planet.

"But we know the human limits and for us this remains a dream. Most likely the first flight will be one way. But I am ready," she said.

Under the call sign Chaika (Seagull), Tereshkova during her three-day mission circled the Earth 48 times, her flight becoming a major propaganda coup for the Soviet Union.

On June 16, Russia will celebrate the 50th anniversary of Tereshkova's historic flight.

In 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to go to space.

The Legend and Name of Sally Ride Lives on as AGOR ship

Prof Sally Ride

The United States Navy's first academic research ship to be named after a woman will be christened R/V Sally Ride after NASA's first female astronaut to fly in space.

She became the first American woman to enter space in a low Earth orbit in 1983, a full twenty years after the Soviet Union's first woman astronaut Valentina Tereshkova.

Dr Sally Ride left NASA in 1987 to work as a Professor at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Arms Control and had served on the investigation panels for two space shuttle disasters (Challenger and Columbia)—the only person to serve on both.

Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus announced Friday (April 12) the next ocean-class Auxiliary General Oceanographic Research (AGOR) ship will be named the R/V Sally Ride.

"As secretary of the Navy, I have the great privilege of naming ships that will represent America with distinction as part of the fleet for many decades to come," Mabus said in a statement revealing the names of seven ships, including the Sally Ride.

"These ships were all named to recognise the hard working people from cities all around our country who have contributed in so many ways to our Navy and Marine Corps team."

Mabus named the future R/V Sally Ride in memory of the astronaut, who also served as a professor, scientist and innovator at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) at the University of California in San Diego. Scripps will operate the R/V Sally Ride when it enters the Navy's fleet in 2015.

Dr Sally Ride, 65, died on July 23, 2012, as a result of pancreatic cancer.

The R/V Sally Ride, a Neil Armstrong-class AGOR ship, is the U.S. Navy's first research vessel named after a woman. 

It is named after the late great Prof Sally Ride, America's first woman in space.

CREDIT: Department of Defense

Valentina Tereshkova (born 6 March 1937) is a retired Soviet cosmonaut and the first woman to have flown in space, having been selected from more than four hundred applicants and five finalists to pilot Vostok 6 on 16 June 1963.

It took NASA and the US Adminstration a further 20 years to finally approve of women astronauts. Until that time they were thought NOT capable of the Right Stuff!