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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

Photo {{sliderIndex+1}} from 11

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

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

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