Four Historic Firsts for Women in Space You Might not Know About
First Woman in Space
Soviet cosmonaut (宇航员) Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to go to space when she was launched with the Vostok 6 mission on June 16, 1963. She was selected from a pool of 400 applicants and five finalists. She was honorarily inducted（入伍）into the Soviet Air Force so that she could join the Cosmonaut Corps. Tereshkova is the only woman ever to have been on a solo space mission.
First US Woman in Space
Sally Ride was the first American astronaut to go into orbit on June 18, 1983, as a crew member on the space shuttle Challenger for STS-7. Ride was one of 8,000 people to answer an ad in the Stanford student newspaper seeking applicants for NASA. She was chosen to join the space program in 1978. She went on one additional mission and spent a total of 343 hours in space.
First Woman to Walk in Space
The first woman to walk in space, Svetlana Savitskaya, was also a cosmonaut. She was on her second mission when she space-walked as part of the Salyut 7-EP2 on July 17, 1984. She was also the first woman to have gone into space twice.
First Teacher to go to Space
Christa McAuliffe was a teacher and a civilian astronaut from Concord, NH who was killed with six other crew members when the space shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds after launch on January 28, 1986. McAuliffe was selected from more than 11,000 applicants to participate in the NASA Teacher in Space Project. She was planning on conducting experiments and teaching two lessons from space.
