The Grandma likes listening to Joseph's stories, and she misses him a lot when they spend time without news of each other.
Today, she has remembered another great story explained by Joseph, the life and works of Svetlana Savitskaya, the Russian cosmonaut who became the first woman to perform a spacewalk, on a day like today in 1984.
Svetlana Yevgenyevna Savitskaya, in Russian Светла́на Евге́ньевна Сави́цкая; born 8 August 1948) is a Russian former aviator and Soviet cosmonaut who flew aboard Soyuz T-7 in 1982, becoming the second woman in space.
On her 1984 Soyuz T-12 mission, she became the first woman to fly to space twice, and the first woman to perform a spacewalk.
She set several FAI world records as a pilot.
More information: Russian Space News
Svetlana Savitskaya was born in a privileged family. Her father, Yevgeny Savitsky, was a highly decorated fighter pilot during the Second World War, which later brought him to the position of Deputy Commander-in-Chief of Soviet Air Defence. Her mother was a Moscow Communist party leader.
Without the knowledge of her parents, Savitskaya began parachuting at the age of 16. Her father realized her unknown extracurricular activity upon the discovery of a parachute knife in his daughter’s school bag.
After his discovery, he further promoted this tendency. On her seventeenth birthday, she already had 450 parachute jumps. Over the next year, she led record stratosphere jumps from 13,800 m and 14,250 m. Over the course of her flying experience, Savitskaya achieved three world record jumps from the stratosphere and 15 world record jumps from jet planes.
After graduating in 1966, she enrolled in the Moscow Aviation Institute (MAI), where she also took flight lessons.
In 1971, she was licensed as a flight instructor. After graduating from the MAI in 1972, she trained as a test pilot at the Fedotov Test Pilot School, graduating in 1976.
In May 1978 she went to work for the aircraft manufacturer Yakovlev, as a test pilot. In her flight experience, she became the first woman to reach 2,683 km/h in a MiG-25 aircraft.
An experienced and highly educated female in the Soviet Space Program, Savitskaya was reportedly an extremely serious, unbending, and steely woman. While she and Tereshkova were both chosen for missions into space due to Soviet propaganda purposes, Savitskaya was much more trained and experienced in aeronautics whereas Tereshkova was chosen as a political stunt.
Between 1969 and 1977 she was a member of the Soviet national team for aerobatics. At the FAI World Aerobatic Championships in July 1970 at Hullavington, she flew a Yak-18 and won the world championship together with an all-female team. At this particular Championship in the United Kingdom, a journalist for the British Press nicknamed Savitskaya Miss Sensation.
At the 1972 World Championships in Salon-de-Provence she placed third; in 1976 in Kiev with a Yak-50, fifth.
In 1979, Savitskaya participated in the selection process for the second group of female cosmonauts.
On June 30, 1980, she was officially admitted to the cosmonaut group. Of the nine women selected, Savitskaya was the only test pilot. The groups’ training was announced during French Air force officer and astronaut Jean-Loup Chretien's space mission. She passed her exams on February 24, 1982.
In December 1981, Savitskaya prepared for her first space flight, a short-term flight to the space station Salyut 7. She held the position of research cosmonaut on this mission. The mission of this second visiting expedition of the Salyut 7 was to prove the Soviet superiority to America by flying another woman into space and to replace the Soyuz T-5 spacecraft the crew would use for their return with a new vehicle.
More information: Russia Beyond
The commander of this mission was Leonid Popov, with his third flight; it was flight engineer Alexander Serebrov's first flight.
The launch of Soyuz T-7 took place on August 19, 1982. This made Savitskaya the second woman in space, 19 years after Valentina Tereshkova.
In December 1983 she was assigned to her second flight, including an extravehicular activity, or EVA, three weeks after American astronaut Kathy Sullivan's flight and EVA assignment were made public. The timing of her mission would become one of her last triumphs to further the Soviet propaganda agenda in performing the first woman's space walk before the Americans.
Savitskaya was chosen above other female cosmonauts due to the extensive flight experience and physical ability to perform the necessary operations in a heavy, bulky space suit for multiple hours. Savitskaya participated in this mission under the title of flight engineer.
Again, it was to be a short-term mission to Salyut 7, this time bringing tools to the station so that the third resident crew, the Salyut 7 EO-3, could repair a fuel line.
More information: TASS-Russian News Agency
On July 17, 1984 Savitskaya launched aboard Soyuz T-12, together with Commander Vladimir Dzhanibekov and research cosmonaut Igor Volk. On July 25, 1984, Savitskaya became the first woman to spacewalk, conducting EVA outside the Salyut 7 space station for 3 hours and 35 minutes, during which she cut and welded metals in space along with her colleague Vladimir Dzhanibekov.
A committed communist, Savitskaya was elected as a people's deputy of the USSR from 1989 and a people's deputy of Russia in 1990, a position she held until 1992. She did not welcome the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, noting that everything her parents had worked hard to build was destroyed almost overnight, and she was glad they did not live to see it.
Savitskaya retired in 1993 from the Russian Air Force with the rank of Major. In 1994/95 she worked as an Assistant Professor in Economics and Investment at the Moscow State Aviation Institute.
In 1996, she was elected a deputy of the State Duma representing the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, and has been re-elected four times since then. She presently serves as Deputy Chair of the Committee on Defence, and is also a member of the Coordination council presidium of the National Patriotic Union.
More information: National Space Centre
One may even land on water, somewhere in the world Ocean,
still, the planet is their home.
One has a natural psychological wish to return to earth, to their home.
Svetlana Savitskaya
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