From her youth, Irina Solovyova was skydiving, and thus she got into astronautics. In 1963, she was preparing for a flight on the Vostok-6 spacecraft as the backup to Valentina Tereshkova. A few reasons influenced choosing Tereshkova as the first woman-cosmonaut. Tereshkova was from a working-class family, while Solovyova was from the family of the office-workers. Tereshkova's father died during the Soviet-Finnish war. After the flight into space, she asked to find the place of his death as a gratitude from the government. Khrushchev's personal sympathy for Tereshkova and a touching family story put Irina Solovyova aside.