Svetlana Savitskaya

Svetlana Yevgenyevna Savitskaya (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.

After graduating in 1966, she enrolled in the Moscow Aviation Institute (MAI), where she also took flight lessons.

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”.

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.

At the 1972 World Championships in Salon-de-Provence she placed third; in 1976 in Kiev with a Yak-50, fifth.

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 Valentina 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.

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.

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.

The commander of this mission was Leonid Popov, with his third flight; it was flight engineer Alexander Serebrov's first flight.

She passed her exams on February 24, 1982.

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.

During the journey, Savitskaya claimed to have tied herself down to prevent from being carried into another compartment of the craft due to the loss of gravity.

The three cosmonauts docked with the space station the following day, where they were welcomed by Anatoly Berezovoy and Valentin Lebedev.

This was the first time a space station had a mixed gender crew.

Savitskaya was assigned the orbital module of Soyuz T-7 as a private area, but slept as well as the men in the space station.

On August 27, 1982, Popov, Savitskaya, and Serebrov returned to Earth in Soyuz T-5.

The total duration of the mission was 7 days, 21 hours, and 52 minutes.

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.

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 Defense.

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.

In 1995, Savitskaya gave an interview to Baltimore Sun journalist Clara Germani.