In 2012 China sent their first female astronaut into space.
By complete coincidence China send their first female astronaut to space on the 49th anniversary of the first women in space (see below). Ms Liu Yang is a fighter pilot who became China’s first female astronaut after two years training at the age of 33. Ms Liu and her two male colleague’s, Liu Wang and Jing Haipeng, mission was to perform China's first manned rendezvous and docking manoeuvres with the Tiangong space lab. They boarded the Shenzhou-9 spacecraft and were launched into space on this day in 2012 and reached the space lab two days later. Ms Liu, was to perform medical experiments while in orbit. All members of the crew returned safely on the 29th of June 2012.
In 1963 the first women launches into space.
26 year-old Lieutenant Valentina Tereshkova was a textile worker in the Soviet Union. She had longed to travel into space since the news of Colonel Yuri Gagarin becoming the first human in space, on the 12th of April 1961. Tereshkova was an amateur parachutist who only started training as a cosmonaut in March of 1963.
Her voyage into space aboard her space craft Vostok VI was televised and celebrated by thousands across the Soviet Union.
Lieutenant Valentina Tereshkova’s main mission was to attempt a manoeuvre with another spacecraft which would one day become part of a docking sequence. The other space craft, the Vostok V, was piloted by Colonel Valery Bykovsky and had taken off two days previously on the 14th of June and had been orbiting the Earth in anticipation for Ms Tereshkova. The two craft were in radio contact with both travelling in different orbits of Earth and briefly passing at a distance of 3 miles from each other. With the main manoeuvre complete the two cosmonauts began their descent back to Earth both landing safely in Kazakhstan on the 19th of June 1963. Ms Tereshkova completed 49 orbits of Earth or 1,250,000 miles in a little less than three days. Fellow cosmonaut, Colonel Valery Bykovsky completed 82 orbits travelling 2,060,000 miles in a little less than 5 hours breaking the previous record of the longest time in space by just over a day.
