“Second Backup”: Valentina Ponomareva

Abstract

Valentina Leonidovna Ponomareva (maiden name Kovalevskaya) was born on September 18, 1933, in Moscow. In 1957 she graduated from the Moscow Aviation Institute as an engineer, specializing in liquid propellant rocket engines. In the years from 1957 to 1962 she worked as an engineer at the Applied Mathematics Division of the Mathematical Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Moscow. She trained as a pilot at the Tushino Aviation Club. On April 3, 1962, she joined the first women’s group of cosmonauts. In April–November 1962 she had general cosmonaut training. In 1963 she trained for the Vostok 6 mission and served as Valentina Tereshkova’s second backup.1 In 1965–1966 Ponomareva trained as the commander of a planned all-women, 10–20-day Voskhod mission with a space walk. The mission was cancelled. In October 1969 the women’s cosmonaut group was disbanded. From 1969 to 1988 Ponomareva worked as a senior researcher at the Scientific Research Department of the Cosmonaut Training Center. In 1974 she defended a dissertation and was awarded the degree of candidate of technical sciences. In 1988 she pursued her interest in space history and became a researcher at the Institute of the History of Natural Science and Technology of the Academy of Sciences in Moscow. Currently, she is the head of the History of Aviation and Cosmonautics Group at the Institute. Valentina Ponomareva, May 17, 2002 (by Slava Gerovitch). KeywordsSpace FlightAttitude Control SystemSpace ProgramOnboard ComputerLiquid Propellant Rocket EngineThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.