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Elena Serova, the fourth Russian woman to
go to space and the first since 1997, was

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born in the far east of Russia, in a town
called Voz-dviz-henka, where her father was

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stationed with the soviet military.

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There she learned to love the star-filled
sky, and developed an appreciation for flight

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on trips with her father to the airfield.

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As a young student she was influenced by the
writings of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the Russian

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father of rocketry, and by the leading personalities
of the early soviet space program.

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When I was in school my first teacher told
us about different achievements in cosmonautics

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and I was very much impressed by those first
flights, from Svetlana Savitskaya in particular,

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who was the first woman performing a spacewalk.

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She was an amazing individual.

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Serova spent part of her teens in Germany
when her father was transferred there, but

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she returned to Moscow when it was time for
college.

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She pursued her interest in space and engineering
at the Moscow Aviation Institute, graduating

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from its aerospace department, and then going
to work as a test engineer at the Rocket Space

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Corporation Energia, while also earning a
post-graduate degree in economics from the

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Moscow academy of machinery and informatics.

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She was selected for Russia's cosmonaut corps
in 2006, and is eager for the opportunity

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to go to space and improve life on Earth...

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We don't do it for ourselves, we do it for
others, for future generations, so that people