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!