Svetlana Savitskaya: Test Pilot and Cosmonaut

This is the second in a series profiling every woman astronaut, cosmonaut and taikonaut who has been into space. Last time we looked at the career of Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space. Today the focus is Svetlana Savitskaya, the second.

Born in Moscow in 1948, Svetlana was raised in a middle-class family. In high school she was a keen parachutist, and in 1970 she placed 6th in the FAI (Fédération Aéronautique Internationale) World Aerobatic Championship. She went on to set 18 international world records in MiG aircraft and 3 international records in team parachute jumping. In 1974 she began training as a pilot at the urging of her father, a Deputy Commander of the Soviet Air Defences and a World War II air hero who had recognised her interest in flying. Just two years after finishing pilot school, she qualified as a test pilot.

In the late 1970s the Soviet Union realised the United States was planning to send women into space within a few years. Although the Russians already held the record for the first woman in space, they wanted to keep it intact and beat the Americans once again, so they recruited a group of women candidates for cosmonaut school. In July 1980, at 32 years old, Svetlana was selected for training and completed the demanding programs for both the Salyut 7 space station and the Soyuz spacecraft.

After training, Svetlana joined the three-person crew of the Soyuz T-7 mission: a flight to Salyut 7 to spend roughly seven days running experiments before returning to Earth aboard Soyuz T-5. The launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 23:12 on 19 August 1982 was flawless. Svetlana, alongside Leonid Popov and Alexander Serebrov, docked with the Salyut 7 space station.

On boarding the station she was greeted by fellow cosmonaut Valentin Lebedev, who handed her an apron and told her to "start work". Svetlana was there to conduct experiments, and over the course of the mission she studied the cardiovascular system, motion sickness and eye movement, and ran an electrophoresis experiment on human cells. After 7 days, 21 hours and 52 minutes, the crew landed safely 112 km northeast of Arkalyk. The flight made her the second woman in space, on the first human spaceflight by a mixed female and male crew, and a national hero.

On 17 July 1984, on the 50th Soyuz spaceflight, Svetlana became the first woman to fly a second space mission when Soyuz T-12 launched to carry out maintenance on Salyut 7. During the mission she ran further experiments and completed repairs to the station. On 25 July 1984 she and Vladimir Dzhanibekov put on their space suits and exited Salyut 7 to work on the station's exterior, performing cutting, welding and soldering tests. Their spacewalk lasted 3 hours and 55 minutes, and Svetlana had broken another record as the first woman to walk in space.

In a 2009 interview she reflected on the sexism she faced during her career in the Russian Air Force and the Cosmonaut Corps:

Missions were tough. Even among our space colleagues the men wondered why we needed to weld and said that we might burn each other's space suits, or the spaceship's exterior. It's a great responsibility. My spaceflight shut everyone up!

Svetlana was twice awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union and has two asteroids named for her (4118 Sveta and 4003 Savitskaya). Her record of 2683 km/h in a MiG-21, in the female category, remains unbroken.