Tereshkova's backup cosmonaut, the physically strongest candidate Kamanin judged too reserved for the spotlight
"We decided it was worth trying": after she and her fiancé, skydiving instructor Sergey Kiselev, discussed the secret-police recruitment offer at their favorite café until closing time.
A mechanical engineer and nationally ranked parachutist, she was one of five women selected in 1962 for the Soviet Union's first female cosmonaut group. She trained as Valentina Tereshkova's primary backup for the Vostok-6 flight; Nikolai Kamanin rated her the best physically among the candidates but judged her too introverted for the worldwide propaganda role the first woman in space would have to play. Later she prepared with Valentina Ponomaryova for what would have been the first all-female spacewalk on Voskhod, but the mission was cancelled; after the women's group disbanded in 1969, she spent her career as a researcher at the Cosmonaut Training Center and earned a Candidate of Psychological Sciences degree.
Career Timeline
- 1954–59Graduated Ural Polytechnic Institute, mechanical engineering
- 1955–62National parachute team, Master of Sport (1959), ~700 jumps
- 1959–62Engineer, Uralenergomontazh design bureau
- 1962.3Selected for women's cosmonaut group; completed cosmonaut training
- 1963.5Primary backup to Tereshkova for Vostok-6
- 1964–67Graduated Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy; pilot-cosmonaut-engineer
- 1966Trained with Ponomaryova for Voskhod all-female spacewalk (cancelled)
- 1969–91Researcher and senior researcher at TsPK; Candidate of Psychological Sciences (1980); retired as Colonel