Sally Ride

Sally Ride, born in 1951, American astronaut, who in 1983 became the first American woman in space. Ride was a member of two space shuttle crews.

Sally Kristen Ride was born in Los Angeles, California. She was a top athlete as a girl, eventually becoming a nationally ranked tennis player. Ride attended Stanford University, where she earned a B.S. degree in physics and a B.A. degree in English in 1973. She went on to receive a Ph.D. in physics from the school in 1978.

The same year Ride read an article in the school paper about openings in the astronaut training program at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). She applied and, out of thousands of applications, was one of six women accepted. Ride completed the training program in 1979. After serving as an on-ground communications specialist for several early missions, she was selected to be part of the crew on a June 1983 space shuttle mission. During the weeklong flight aboard the Challenger, Ride took part in the launch of two communications satellites, testing the shuttle’s remote manipulator arm, and launching and retrieving a test satellite.

With that flight, Ride became the first American woman in space, and the world’s third female astronaut after Valentina Tereshkova and Svetlana Savitskaya of the Soviet Union. (Tereshkova became the first female astronaut when she flew into space in 1962 and Savitskaya the second when she made her first space flight in 1982.)

The following year Ride took part in a second shuttle mission, which flew in October 1984. She was training for a third mission when the space shuttle Challenger exploded on January 28, 1986 (see Challenger Disaster). Ride served on the panel that investigated the tragedy, which halted the space shuttle program for more than two-and-a-half years.

Ride resigned from NASA in 1987. In 1989 she became professor of physics at the University of California at San Diego and the director of research at the California Space Institute. She is the author of a number of books, including To Space and Back (1986), The Third Planet: Exploring the Earth from Space (1994), The Mystery of Mars (1999), and Exploring Our Solar System (2003). Ride was elected to the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1988.