YAROSLAVL, November 21. /TASS/. The first female cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova said on Monday she believed Russians would be the first to land on Mars and she would have been ready to go to the Red Planet herself, if it was not for her age.

Tereshkova made this statement at the All-Russian gifted children forum titled: "Future Intellectual Leaders of Russia."

"I believe that we’ll be the first on Mars after all. Look, they are using sanctions against us but Americans fly aboard our space vehicles with the help of our carrier rockets and are not going to create their own spaceships," Tereshkova said.

The world’s first female cosmonaut said she had long dealt with the theme of Mars and "had studied this planet specially."

"It is regrettable that years are passing. Otherwise, I would have not ceded the place [in the spacecraft]," the Soviet female cosmonaut said in reply to a question about whether she would fly to Mars.

The audience greeted her with a storm of applause.