June 16: On This Day in 1963 - 1st Woman in Space

June 16, 1963: On this day, Valentina Tereshkova, a 26 year-old former cotton-mill worker, born on a collective farm near Yaroslavl, USSR, became the first woman in space when her spacecraft, Vostok 6, took off from the Tyuratam launch site. She manually controlled Vostok 6 during the 70.8-hour flight through 48 orbits of Earth and landed by parachute (separate from her cabin) on June 19, 1963. In November, 1963, she married cosmonaut Andrian Nikolayev, who had piloted Vostok 3 through 64 Earth orbits. Their child, Yelena, was born in 1964 and was the first born to space-traveler parents.