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.
Activities and affiliations
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
Related historical events
The all-female polar team "Metelitsa"
After the women's cosmonaut group was disbanded in 1969 and she moved to the Cosmonaut Training Center as a researcher, Solovyova's second career unfolded in the polar regions. From 1974 she was a member of "Metelitsa", the all-female polar expedition team founded by Valentina Kuznetsova in 1966, which carried out autonomous journeys on skis at high latitudes. Solovyova served as the team's psychologist and as an assistant leader of the expeditions, taking part in ski expeditions to Franz Josef Land and the eastern part of Taymyr. The team's record includes the 1974 route from Khalmer-Yu to Amderma, the eastern Taymyr coast in 1975, Franz Josef Land in 1977 and 1979, a traverse of Antarctica in 1988-1989 (a 1,420 km ski crossing from Molodyozhnaya station via Mirny to Vostok), and a 1995 march over drifting ice toward the North Pole. With Kuznetsova, the team's founder and leader, Solovyova co-authored the 2011 book on more than four decades of the team's research and expeditions. A memorial ski run for Kuznetsova was first held the same year and continued annually in Moscow each February. Her departure from the cosmonaut corps thus opened onto a long career in polar exploration and the psychology of work in extreme conditions.