At 76, Russian cosmonaut wishes Mars trip

Moscow, June 8 (IANS/RIA Novosti) Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, said Friday that she disapproved of space tourists and would be prepared to leave retirement to undertake a one-way trip to Mars.

The 76-year-old was speaking ahead of the 50th anniversary of her June 16, 1963, blastoff which propelled her into the record books and made her one of the Soviet Union's most feted astronauts.

"Of course, it's a dream to go to Mars and find out whether there was life there or not," Tereshkova said. "If there was, then why did it die out? What sort of catastrophe happened?"

While Tereshkova said she thought the first manned flight to Mars would be a suicide trip, she volunteered to take part. "I am ready," she said.

Tereshkova spent three days orbiting the Earth in 1963 and is one of only three female Russian astronauts to have participated in a space mission, compared with over 50 of their counterparts in the US.

She believes the privilege of going into space should be reserved for scientists and professional astronauts, and not be available to the highest bidder.

There have been eight space tourists since 2001, with each cosmic jaunt costing upward of $20 million.

"Only specialists should be making space flights because, while there have been a lot of flights and more than 50 astronauts, there is still a lot that hasn't been studied," Tereshkova said.

Tereshkova was part of a small team of women assembled by the Soviet authorities as potential astronauts in the wake of the first manned space flight by Yury Gagarin in 1961. But she was the only one who actually went into space.

--IANS/RIA Novosti

sd