When Valentina Tereshkova visited Egypt

A Little Break Post – Escaping the Depressing News from the Middle East and Beyond

In case you missed it, American pop star Katy Perry, journalist Gayle King, Lauren Sánchez (Jeff Bezos’ fiancée), and three other women travelled on Monday aboard a Blue Origin suborbital space tourism flight.

Blue Origin, owned and operated by Bezos, launched this all-female crew on a short journey beyond Earth's atmosphere. According to media reports, Sánchez personally selected the crew members for this flight.

This “trip” reached the Kármán line — the commonly accepted boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space — which lies at an altitude of 100 kilometres (62 miles).

As expected, the 10-minute flight — filled with awkwardly staged moments, especially those featuring Katy Perry — quickly turned into a meme fest online.

Some U.S. mainstream media outlets and social media users even went so far as to claim it was the first all-female trip to space.

That’s not only factually incorrect — it's also a bit offensive.

So, to set the record straight: the first "all-female space mission" wasn't in 2024. It happened in 1963, and the entire crew was Valentina Tereshkova.

Valentina Tereshkova and the Pyramids generated by Chat-GPT as risograph print 

The real pioneer of an all-female spaceflight was Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, who made history in June 1963.

At just 26 years old, she became the first woman — and remains the only woman — to fly solo in space. Her mission aboard Vostok 6 lasted 2 days, 22 hours, and 50 minutes. She orbited Earth 48 times, totaling about 70 hours and 50 minutes in space.

By the international definition of spaceflight (reaching at least 100 km in altitude), she’s still the youngest person to achieve it.

Unlike today’s “space tourists”, who barely spent 10 minutes in microgravity, Tereshkova truly ventured into the unknown — alone. In a sense, she may have been the loneliest woman in human history during that mission.

Technically speaking, Valentina Tereshkova was the first all-female crew in space. She wasn't part of an all-women team — she was the team. One woman. One spacecraft. One solo mission. That makes her the first woman in space and the first one-woman space crew in human history.

The six women on the Blue Origin flight are tourists, not astronauts — and certainly not in the same league as Tereshkova, regardless of your opinion of the Soviet Union.

Now, since you're reading this post — with its title and featured image "generated using the free version of Chatgpt" — you’ve probably guessed I’m about to take a nostalgic turn.

Yes, this is about the time Valentina Tereshkova visited Egypt.

Much like Yuri Gagarin, Tereshkova also came to Egypt, though her visit wasn’t as widely publicized  — mostly because she wasn’t alone. 

She was part of the Soviet delegation led by then-Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, who came to attend the historic diversion of the Nile during the construction of the High Dam in May 1964.

The spotlight, of course, was on President Nasser and Khrushchev. 

According to Russia Today, she spent 20 days in Egypt. That's a long visit.

Still, as Egyptians, we know how to honor our guests. The legendary Egyptian singer and composer Sheikh Sayed Mekawy composed a song titled Valentina, with lyrics written by the legendary poet Salah Jahin — a tribute to the woman who flew alone among the stars.

Amazingly, I found that many from the 1960s generation still remember it. Sheikh Sayed Mekawy — often called the Sheikh of Music — even sampled the famous Soviet song Katyusha in his tribute to her.

In January 1971, during a visit to Moscow, Valentina Tereshkova awarded the Yuri Gagarin Medal to Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat.

Valentina Tereshkova awarding President Sadat the Gagarin medal in 
January 1971 in Moscow "Alamy"

In return, President Sadat awarded Tereshkova the Order of the Nile, making her the first Russian (or Soviet) woman — and one of the very few foreign women — to receive such an honor.

I only wish I had access to the Egyptian press archives from that time. I’m sure I would have found interviews with her in newspapers, maybe even footage on Egyptian TV. But sadly, you have easier access to King Tut’s treasures than to our own media archives.

Valentina Tereshkova visited Egypt in August 2001 to participate in a celebration organized by the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism marking the 30th anniversary of the construction of the High Dam. 

She returned in May 2003 to take part in a special event commemorating the 40th anniversary of her historic spaceflight, held between May 13 and 17.

By the way, before I wrap up on Blue Origin, I just remembered — Egypt’s first woman in space, and in fact the country’s first space tourist, was Sara Sabry.

Engineer Sara Sabry became the first Egyptian, Arab, and African woman to travel on a suborbital flight aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard mission (NS-22). She also holds the distinction of being Egypt’s first analogue astronaut.

She earned that title in 2021 after participating in a two-week simulated Moon mission at the LunAres Research Station in Poland, where she served as the crew’s medical officer.

Sabry holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the American University in Cairo and a master’s degree in biomedical engineering from the Polytechnic University of Milan in Italy. According to Blue Origin, she is currently pursuing a PhD in aerospace sciences, with a focus on space suit design.

Her seat on NS-22 was sponsored by Space for Humanity (S4H), a nonprofit organization based in Colorado that works to expand access to space for people around the world.

Sabry is now a motivational speaker and the founder of a nonprofit called Deep Space Initiative, which promotes space exploration and research accessibility.

Maybe one day, inshallah, we’ll have a true all-Egyptian female astronaut crew — continuing what Valentina Tereshkova began.

P.S.: I wrote this in shock upon learning that the cemetery of pioneering Egyptian astronomer Mahmoud Pasha El-Falaki — the founder of modern Egyptian astronomy — was demolished as part of the ongoing destruction of Cairo’s historic City of the Dead. His resting place has been erased to make way for a garage for tourist buses, despite promises made by Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly, who — once again and unsurprisingly — failed to keep his word.

That brief trip to space ends, as usual, with bitter news back here on Earth.