Russian Cosmonaut Squad Needs More Women - Commander

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 11th April, 2023) The Russian space industry would want to see gender equality among the candidates to the national cosmonaut crew, but the prevalence is with male candidates at the moment, Russian space crew commander Oleg Kononenko told Sputnik.

"Every time the demand is discussed for at least half of the recruits to be girls. But sadly it's just boys," Kononenko said in an interview preceding Cosmonautics Day, which Russia and other former Soviet countries celebrate on April 12.

Currently Anna Kikina is the only woman on the Russian space team. She made her first flight to the International Space Station (ISS) from October 5, 2022 to March 12, 2023 on the US Crew Dragon spacecraft.

A total of six women went to space in the history of Soviet and Russian cosmonautics. The world's first woman to go to space, Valentina Tereshkova, was from the Soviet Union and had her flight on June 16, 1963. The second Soviet female pilot-cosmonaut was Svetlana Savitskaya, who flew to the Salyut 7 space station in 1982 and 1984.

Russian female cosmonaut Yelena Kondakova went to space twice in 1994-1995 and 1997. Yelena Serova worked in space during her long term mission to the ISS in 2014-2015. In 2021, Russian actress Yulia Peresild flew to the ISS as part of a Russia film crew to shoot the world's first movie in space titled "The Challenge."