On Tuesday 18 June 2013 WIA-Europe organised a lunch in ESTEC to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Valentina Tereshkova first flight in Space! The lunch was well attended and we had to change from lunch corner to foyer to host all the participants.

Olga Zhadanovich gave us an insight into Valentina’s journey from the beginning how she was selected till the safe return after her 3 day stay in space. To see the presentation click here.

To see event pictures click here.

After the lunch we took a guided tour of the Erasmus Centre and a 3D tour of the ISS. Here we saw a real Foton capsule, similar to the Soyuz capsule Valentina and Yuri Gagarin used.  The tour gave us on overview starting from short term microgravity experiment set ups which can be performed in  a drop tower (seconds of microgravity) to parabolic flights to sounding rockets till long term experiments on board the ISS. We also took a look at the Columbus module and ATV.