Was Valentina Tereshkova really the first woman in space?
I think the story to which you are referring is one of many variants that are based on claims made by Italian brothers Achille and Gian Battista Judica-Cordiglia. They were into amateur radio and built a tracking station of their own to collect signals from spacecraft called Torre Bert. They also helped other amateur radio enthusiants build similar stations around the world to form a network called Zeus. (Though it only lasted for a year.) The original story of the lost cosmonauts appeared in an Italian newspaper in 1965 and was based on a recording said to have been picked up in November 1963. The date in the story was later changed to May 1961. The link below has quite a discussion about the Judica-Cordiglia brothers and their observatory and has links to other references and websites. It’s summary is that there is no evidence to back the brother’s claims, in particular no-one from the Soviet program has come forward with corroborating information since the end of the Cold War. Many
Yes, Valentina was the first woman in space. If you want to know more about Valentina, read this http://www.universeguide.com/Tereshkova.
