Although she desired to continue pursuing a career as a cosmonaut and engineer, her superiors had a different plan for her in politics. Following Gagarin's death, the Soviet space program was not willing to risk losing another hero. Against her wishes, she was appointed as the leader of the Committee for Soviet Women in 1968. A few months after she graduated with honours from the Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy in October 1969, the team of women cosmonauts was disbanded and a woman would not go to space again until Svetlana Savitskaya in 1982.