cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/1291044

On this day on the 16th of June 1963 the spaceship Vostok-6 was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, piloted by the first female cosmonaut in the world - Valentina Tereshkova.

The “Seagull” (that was the call sign invented by Sergei Korolev) began its journey to the stars with the phrase “Hey! Sky, take off your hat”.

The legendary flight lasted just under three days, during which time the ship made 48 rotations around the Earth. On board, twenty-six year old Valentina kept an in-flight magazine and took photographs of the horizon - later they were used to detect aerosol layers in the atmosphere.

Valentina Tereshkova is still the only woman on our planet to have made a solo space flight. She proved that cosmonautics is not just a vocation for men.