Valentina Tereshkova is the first and youngest woman to have flown in space with a solo mission under the Soviet space program, on the Vostok 6 on 16 June 1963.
She orbited the Earth 48 times, spent almost three days in space, and to date remains the only woman to have been on a solo space mission.
While in orbit, Tereshokova conducted biomedical & science experiments to learn about the effects of space on the human body, took photographs that helped identify aerosols in the Earth’s atmosphere, and manually piloted the ship.
The Soviets’ space missions were timed so closely that Tereshkova’s Vostok 6 capsule and the Vostok 5 actually passed within 3 miles of each other, and she spoke to her fellow cosmonaut, Valery Bykovsky, over the radio during her flight! Tereshkova, whose call sign was “Seagull,” was one of four females selected to the Cosmonaut Corps, and the only one from her group to ever fly in space.