On June 16, 1963, Valentina Tereshkova launched into orbit aboard Vostok 6, becoming the first woman — and the first civilian — to fly in space.

She was 26. She was a textile worker and amateur parachutist from Yaroslavl. She had no pilot's license and no engineering degree. The Soviets selected her from a pool of civilian women with skydiving experience, trained her for 18 months, and sent her up.

She orbited the Earth 48 times over three days. She operated the spacecraft manually when an error in the navigation software was causing the craft to drift away from Earth rather than toward it — a problem that, had she not recognized and corrected it, would have meant she could not reenter the atmosphere.

She landed in a field in Kazakhstan, was welcomed by local farmers, and ate potatoes and onions with them while waiting for recovery teams.

After her mission, the Soviet space program did not fly another woman for 19 years. NASA did not fly a woman until 1983. Tereshkova's flight was used as propaganda, then quietly shelved.

She became a Soviet politician, a figure of official celebration, and lived long enough to see Sally Ride fly in 1983 and to be named to the Russian Olympic torch relay in 2014. She is still alive.