The
V-2 (
German:
Vergeltungswaffe 2, "Vengeance Weapon 2"), technical name
Aggregat-4 (A4), was the world's first long-range
ballistic missile. It was developed during the
Second World War in
Germany, specifically targeted at
London and later
Antwerp.
Commonly referred to as the V-2 rocket, the liquid-propellant rocket was a combat-ballistic missile, now considered short-range, and first known human artifact to enter outer space. It was the progenitor of all modern rockets, including those used by the United States and Soviet Union's space programs. During the aftermath of World War II the American, Soviet and British governments all gained access to the V-2's technical designs as well as the actual German scientists responsible for creating the rockets, via Operation Paperclip, Operation Osoaviakhim and Operation Backfire respectively.
The weapon was presented by Nazi propaganda as a retaliation for the bombers that attacked ever more German cities from 1942 until Germany surrendered.
Beginning in September 1944, over 3,000 V-2s were launched as military rockets by the German Wehrmacht against Allied targets during the war, mostly London and later Antwerp and Liège. According to a BBC documentary in 2011, the attacks resulted in the deaths of an estimated 9,000 civilians and military personnel, while 12,000 forced labourers and concentration camp prisoners were killed producing the weapons.
Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova (
Russian:
Валенти́на Влади́мировна Терешко́ва) (born 6 March 1937) is the first woman in space, now a retired
Soviet cosmonaut. Out of more than four hundred applicants and then out of five finalists, she was selected to pilot
Vostok 6 on 16 June 1963 and become the first woman to fly in
space. This also made her the first civilian in space (she was only honorarily inducted into the USSR's Air Force as a condition on joining the Cosmonaut Corps). On this mission, lasting almost three days in space, she performed various tests on herself to collect data on the female body's reaction to spaceflight.
Before being recruited as a cosmonaut, Tereshkova was a textile-factory assembly worker and an amateur parachutist. After the female cosmonaut group was dissolved in 1969, she became a prominent member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, holding various political offices. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, she retired from politics and remains revered as a hero in Russia.