Who was the first woman in space?

Valentina V. Tereshkova-Nikolaeva, a Soviet cosmonaut, was the first woman in space. She spent three days circling Earth, completing 48 orbits aboard Vostok 6, which launched on June 16, 1963. Although she had little cosmonaut training, she was an expert parachutist. The United States put a woman in space twenty years later, on June 18, 1983, when astronaut Sally K. Ride flew aboard the space shuttle Challenger mission STS-7.