Tereshkova was born in the town of Bolshoye Maslennikovo in central Russia on March 6, 1937. Her mother worked in the textile industry, and her father was a tractor driver who was eventually honoured as a World War II war hero. Tereshkova was barely two years old when he was killed on the Finnish front.

Tereshkova became the first woman in space in 1963, only two years after Yuri Gagarin made history by becoming the first human in orbit.

However, as funding for space programmes increased, so did the gender divide. It took another 19 years for Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya to become the second woman in space, onboard the Soyuz T-7 mission in 1982.