Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova was born in the Yaroslavl Region of Russia on March 6, 1937. She was the second born of three children. Her father was a tractor driver and her mother worked in a textile plant. Valentina began school in 1945 at the age of eight. In 1953, she left school and began working.

Ride’s launch on STS-7 occurred almost to the day of the 20 th anniversary of the launch of the first woman in space, Soviet cosmonaut Valentina V. Tereshkova. After the successful flight of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space in April 1961, Soviet Chief Designer Sergey Korolyov had the idea of flying a woman in space.