During her flight into space, Valentina sustained a handful of physical issues, including a rash that emerged under one of the biomedical sensors. She also suffered a painful cramp in her right shin that arrived on her second day in space. However, she persevered to historic heights. In this article, we present additional facts concerning her life, including a rough landing, supposed fairytale marriage, and the birth of a daughter.
8. At the time of the landing, Valentina sustained a dark blue bruise on her nose from hitting her helmet. When she made public appearances, heavy makeup was needed to cover up the bruise. This agitated Tereshkova, who believed that makeup did not fit into her image of a ‘pure worker girl.’
9. In the end, Valentina was in space aboard Vostok 6 for three days, which exceeded the flight time of all American astronauts at that time put together.
10. Sadly, the Soviet Air Force made strides to discredit her after she completed her flight. They came up with accusations that spanned her being drunk on the day she reported to the launch pad to her ignoring direct orders from the Center. All of this was due to the embarrassment some ground control workers felt when she had pointed out their error in regards to the inside of her spacecraft.
11. It is said that a joke circulating around about Valentina and the only single cosmonaut in the space program (Andrian Nikolayev) should marry, led to their marriage in 1963. However, it was revealed later that the two had already shown interest in one another. The Premier heard of this and thought it would be nice to ‘market’ a wedding between the two. It is said that he was instrumental in pressuring the two to marry. The ceremony took place on November 3rd, 1963 at the Moscow Wedding Palace. The wedding party took place at the governmental mansion with Khrushchev in attendance, as well as high-level government and space program leaders.
12. Tereshkova gave birth to a daughter named Elena Andrianovna on June 8th, 1964. She would later grow up to become a physician.
13. Valentina’s marriage to Andrian was not the fairytale match made in heaven. They bickered often and it was claimed that he spent too much time with his male buddies. Unfortunately, Valentina lived in an era where it was highly frowned upon for the marriages of astronauts to crumble in the public eye (especially this one), so the couple felt compelled to stay with one another.
14. From 1964 to 1969, Valentina obtained a graduate level engineering education at the Zhukovskiy Military Air Academy. Just after her graduation in October, the female cosmonaut detachment was disbanded.
15. Valentina always had dreams of making it to Mars, but was essentially shut out of the mix in later years. The second Russian woman to reach space was Svetlana Savitskaya, which was accomplished in 1982. She also became the first woman to walk in space in 1984.