Svetlana Savitskaya

Svetlana Savitskaya is a Soviet cosmonaut and former aerobatic and test pilot who became the second woman to fly in space, aboard Soyuz T-7 in 1982, nearly two decades after Valentina Tereshkova. On a subsequent 1984 mission she became the first woman to perform a spacewalk, working outside the Salyut 7 space station on welding and metal-cutting experiments. Savitskaya later pursued a political career in Russia, serving as a deputy in the State Duma.