Biography

She was born on 6th of March in Bolshoye Maslennikovo, a village in Russia western.

She is a retired russian cosmonaut, engineer and politician.

Valentina began attending school when she was eight or ten, and then started working in the textile mill in 1954. She continued her education through correspondence courses, and learned to parachute in her spare time. It was her parachuting experience that let to her being chosen, in 1962, for training as a cosmonaut in the Soviet Space Program.

During the late 1950s and the 1960s, the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union scaled for space travel supremacy. The competitiveness between the two nations for "ONE UPPING" achievements was fierce and the Soviets were determined to be the first to send a woman to space.