The Russian Space Agency spent several months to make a perfect design of the craft and selecting the right candidate out of several hundreds of applicants, before sending its first woman into space in the 1960s. But they forgot to pack one very important thing of the kit i.e. a toothbrush for a female pioneering cosmonaut.

Valentina Tereshkova, 78, revealed that she had to clean her teeth with her fingers during the three-day mission in the Vostok-6 spacecraft in 1963. It is unfortunately a fact, but she was resourceful as every woman and used her hands to clean her teeth, she said during the opening of an exhibition exploring the then Soviet Union's ground-breaking space programme.

Dr. Tereshkova called the 2.6 ton craft, which shows the scorch marks from its 16,750mph re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere, 'my best and most beautiful friend'. It was brought from the Russian cosmonaut training school at Star City, near Moscow, to star in the London show.

She revealed that her 1963 mission almost ended in disaster after engineers had wrongly configured the craft for re-entry. She said she had to call ground control to correct the error.

The history of Russia's space programme has been underplayed in the West, but its space age started when it became the first to launch an artificial satellite Sputnik in 1957. So it grabbed other titles of becoming the first to send an animal, man and woman into space all within six years duration.

Most of the 150 exhibits have never been seen outside of Russia, and some even had to be de-classified by the government. Dr Tereshkova said, "Holding the exhibition in London was very symbolic as it shows how good the co-operation between British and Russian scientists is. Of course we would like it to be even broader and deeper".