• Irina Solovyova Born in the Tula region in 1937. Graduated from the Constraction faculty of the Ural Polytechnic Institute.

    Irina Solovyova

     

    Born in the Tula region in 1937.

    Graduated from the Constraction faculty

    of the Ural Polytechnic Institute.

  • From her youth, Irina Solovyova was skydiving, and thus she got into astronautics. In 1963, she was preparing for a flight on the Vostok-6 spacecraft as the backup to Valentina Tereshkova. A few reasons influenced choosing Tereshkova as the first woman-cosmonaut. Tereshkova was from a working-class family, while Solovyova was from the family of the office-workers. Tereshkova's father died during the Soviet-Finnish war. After the flight into space, she asked to find the place of his death as a gratitude from the government. Khrushchev's personal sympathy for Tereshkova and a touching family story put Irina Solovyova aside.

  • My Personal Cosmos exhibition displays Irina Solovyova's shirt presented to her in Star City. Embroidered 2000 symbolizes the number of...

    My Personal Cosmos exhibition displays Irina Solovyova's shirt presented to her in Star City. Embroidered 2000 symbolizes the number of parachute jumps that Solovyova made having a big dream that turned into the unfulfilled hope of the first woman to go into space.