Dr. Sally Ride’s groundbreaking 1983 Challenger flight made her the first American woman in space. At the age of 32, it also made her the youngest American astronaut at the time.
Ride grew up in the Van Nuys and Encino neighborhoods of Los Angeles and attended Stanford University, where she earned a Master of Science in Physics in 1975 and a Doctor of Philosophy in 1978. While she was a student, she read an article on the front page of The Stanford Daily reporting that NASA was inviting women to apply to the astronaut program. She was one of six female applicants selected.
She went through rigorous training for the space program, including learning to fly NASA's T-38 Talon jet aircraft and parachute jumping. She also served in various roles for NASA before her first flight. She was a ground-based Capsule Communicator (CapCom) for the second and third space shuttle flights. She also helped design Canadarm 1, the robotic arm that shuttle crews used to deploy and retrieve payloads, and was the first person – of any gender – to operate it.
In 1983, during her first trip to space, she was the flight engineer. She launched two communications satellites and conducted experiments. The following year, she went on another shuttle mission, the STS-41G, where she spent more than a week executing observations of Earth and working on refueling techniques for shuttles. She was scheduled to make a third trip; however, it was permanently canceled after the tragic Challenger explosion in 1986. She then served on the Presidential Commission that investigated the incident. Before leaving NASA, she became the first Director of the Office of Exploration, which she played a role in founding.
In 1989, she became a Professor of Physics at the University of California, San Diego, and director of the California Space Institute. She received many honors for her contributions to science and space exploration, including the NASA Space Flight Medal and the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s Theodore Roosevelt Award. She died of cancer in 2012 at the age of 61.