Valentina Tereshkova, who pioneers amongst the female astronauts celebrated her 70th birthday on Tuesday and asserted that she still dreams of flying to Mars – even on a one-way ticket. Hey that’s cool! She earned name in history books by spending 71 hours in orbit in June 1963. She was then twenty-five years of age. Her trip to space on Soviet Vostok spacecraft was able to score propaganda points for the Soviet Union in its Cold War space rivalry with the United States. She came from a very humble family her father was a minor peasant. Thus, her journey gave her wide acclaim and she became an idol for young Soviet women. President Vladimir Putin invited her to his residence near Moscow to celebrate her birthday. And stated that her flight remained an inspiration for the resurgent Russia of today. After the collapse of Soviet Union, she vanished from public life and presently heads an obscure international cooperation association under the auspices of the foreign ministry and takes part in private projects helping orphans.