The first woman to fly into space, Valentina Tereshkova, turned 70 on 6 March 2007. Celebrating her birthday, she met with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin said of her June 1963 flight—which lasted 71 hours—"Your flight was, and will remain, a matter of pride for the Soviet people, for the Russian people."
Tereshkova has all but disappeared from the public eye since the fall of the Soviet Union, but she does lead an "obscure international cooperation association under the auspices of the foreign ministry and takes part in private projects helping orphans," according to CNN.com.
Talking to the Russian paper Kommersant, she said, "All of us who have been in space dream all our lives about another flight. Don't believe them if they tell you it's nonsense. We dream about it! I dream about it."
She talked about her pre-launch conversation in 1963: "When I was in the spaceship before the flight, Sergey Korolev maintained contact with me. And do you know what we talked about before takeoff? A flight to Mars.”
Responding to a question about the possibility of life on Mars, Tereshkova said "Is there life on Mars? Isn't there life on Mars? I'll tell you for sure once I've taken that flight.”
And when a reporter asked "Is it true what they say, that you are even ready not to return to Earth?" Tereshkova said "Why return? What's the point?"
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