Svetlana Savitskaya is also a member of the Coordination council presidium of the National Patriotic Union. Savitskaya was one of five cosmonauts selected to raise the Russian flag at the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics opening ceremony. The asteroid 4118 Sveta is named after her. Svetlana Savitskaya Svetlana Yevgenyevna Savitskaya (; born 8 August 1948) is a retired Soviet aviator and cosmonaut who flew aboard Soyuz T-7 in 1982, becoming the second woman in space. On her 1984 mission she became the first woman to fly to space twice, and the first woman to perform a spacewalk. She set several FAI world records
Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper as a Mission Specialist and became only the 8th woman to perform a spacewalk (out of 180 total spacewalkers). Stefanyshyn-Piper participated in two of the mission's three EVAs for a total of 12 hours, 8 minutes made her the second most experienced female spacewalker. She also became the first Minnesota woman to go into space. During her pre-flight interview, she described her philosophy about human exploration of space: Piper fainted twice during the STS-115 welcome home ceremony. Stefanyshyn-Piper was commander of the 12th expedition of NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO), a NASA program for studying human survival in the