On June 18, 1983, Sally Ride made history by becoming the first American woman in space. Born in Los Angeles in 1951, Ride had an impressive educational background with bachelor’s degrees in English and physics from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in physics. After seeing an ad for NASA’s astronaut program in 1978, Ride applied and was one of only six women selected out of over 8,000 applicants. She completed a year of training before being assigned as a mission specialist for the STS-7 mission on the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1983, where she deployed communication satellites using the robotic arm.
While Ride was the first American woman in space, she was actually the third woman overall to embark on a spaceflight. Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman in space in 1963, and Svetlana Yevgenyevna Savitskaya was the second in 1982. Ride’s second and final spaceflight took place in 1984 on STS-41-G, where she spent eight days in space before being assigned to a third mission that never happened due to the Challenger disaster in 1986. Ride then took on a role with the Rogers Commission investigating the disaster.
Ride’s time in space was deeply impactful, and she remarked on the fragility and importance of Earth’s atmosphere. She retired from NASA in 1987 and began teaching at the University of California, San Diego. In 2001, she founded Sally Ride Science, an organization focused on encouraging girls to pursue careers in STEM fields. She was posthumously inducted into the Astronaut Hall of Fame in 2003, a year after she passed away from pancreatic cancer at age 61. Ride’s legacy continues to inspire future generations of girls and women to pursue careers in science and space exploration.
Throughout her career, Ride logged a total of 343 hours in space on her two missions. One of her final legacies was a project that allowed middle school students to take pictures of the moon using cameras aboard NASA’s twin Grail spacecraft. Author and broadcaster Lynn Sherr praised Ride for breaking barriers with grace and professionalism and changing the face of America’s space program. Former NASA Administrator Charles Bolden also commended Ride’s contributions, highlighting her significant impact and accomplishments in the field of space exploration.
