Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos is putting together a team of female cosmonauts to conduct flights into outer space, a source in the space industry said earlier. Only four women have traveled into orbit in the history of Soviet and Russian space exploration: Valentina Tereshkova (1963), Svetlana Savitskaya (1982, 1984), Yelena Kondakova (1994, 1997) and Yelena Serova (2014). Yelena Serova became the first Russian woman cosmonaut to set out on a long space flight in the past 20 years. Russian women in space - in photo gallery by TASS
Women cosmonauts that made history in Russia’s quest to explore space
Four women have traveled into orbit in the history of Soviet and Russian space exploration
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The first woman in space was a Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova. Photo: Valentina Tereshkova passes a medical examination at the Cosmonaut Training Center
© Fotokhronika TASS/Vera Zhikharenko Valentina Tereshkova was selected from over 400 applicants to pilot Vostok 6 on June 16 1963
© Fotokhronika TASS/B. Smirnov Photo: Valentina Tereshkova (center) after landing
© Fotokhronika TASS Svetlana Savitskaya (center) became the second woman in space some 19 years after Valentina Tereshkova
© Yury Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center Svetlana Savitskaya (center) was on her second mission when she spaced-walked on July 25, 1984
© Fotokhronika TASS/Leonid Popov Savitskaya conducted an EVA (extravehicular activity) outside the Salyut 7 space station for 3 hours 35 minutes
© Fotokhronika TASS Russian Yelena Kondakova was the third Russian female cosmonaut to travel to space and the first woman to make a long-duration spaceflight. Photo: Yelena Kondakova with daughter
© ITAR-TASS/Albert Pushkarev She returned to Earth on March 22, 1995 after a five-month stay at the Mir space station. Kondakova also became the first woman to travel for both the Soyuz programme and the Space Shuttle
© Yury Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center Yelena Serova became the first female Russian cosmonaut to visit the International Space Station on 26 September 2014
© ITAR-TASS/Press service of the Yury Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center Serova graduated from the Aerospace Faculty of the Moscow Aviation Institute qualified as an engineer. Photo: US astronaut Barry Wilmore, Russian cosmonauts Alexander Samokutyaev and Yelena Serova, crew members of the mission to the International Space Station at Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan
© AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin, Pool ISS Expedition 41/42 crew member, Russia's cosmonaut Yelena Serova after the landing of Soyuz reentry module in Kazakhstan
© Donat Sorokin/TASS