Featured Woman in STEM: Sally Ride
Icon and role model
Dr. Sally Ride
was the first American woman in space!
image credit: nasa
Sally Ride was born on May 26, 1951 in Los Angeles, California. After studying at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, and then UCLA, Ride graduated from Stanford University in 1973 with bachelor's degrees in English and physics. She stayed on at Stanford to earn a master's degree in physics 1975, and a PhD in physics in 1978. For her research, she studied the interaction of X-rays with the interstellar medium.
In 1978, Dr. Ride applied for NASA’ astronaut training program. She was one of only 35 people selected out of 8000 applications! She joined NASA Astronaut Group 8—the first class of American astronauts to include women. By 1979, she had completed the rigorous NASA astronaut training program, and was eligible to work as a mission specialist. She served as the ground-based capsule communicator (CapCom) for flights of the Space Shuttle Columbia in 1981 and 1982, and helped to develop the Space Shuttle's robotic arm.
five astronaut candidates Taking a break from training exercises at a three-day water survival school in florida. from left to right, they are Sally K. Ride, Judith A. Resnik, Anne L. Fisher, Kathryn D. Sullivan and Rhea Seddon. (image credit: nasa)
On June 18, 1983, Sally Ride made history by becoming the first American woman in space as a crew member on the Space Shuttle Challenger. The purpose of this mission was to deploy and test multiple satellites. Part of Ride's job was to operate a robotic arm to maneuver the first Shuttle Pallet Satellite (SPAS-1). SPAS-1 was deployed, underwent experiments, then was recollected by the crew and brought back to Earth. Ride returned to Earth after a week in orbit.
Sally ride mid-deck on the space shuttle challenger in 1983 (Image credit: NASA)
sally ride on the Challenger in 1983 (image credit: nasa)
In 1984, Ride completed a second mission, again serving as a mission specialist on the Challenger. This was the first shuttle mission to include two women on the crew (Sally Ride and Kathryn Sullivan), as well as the first American EVA involving a woman (Sullivan). Between these two missions, Sally Ride spent a total of more than 340 hours in space! She was set to have completed a third mission on the Challenger in July 1986, which had to be cancelled due to the disaster that struck the shuttle in January that year.
EarthKAM logo (image courtesy: NASA)
Dr. Ride retired from NASA in 1987. She then went on to become a professor of physics, and Director of the California Space Institute, at the University of California in San Diego. One of her passions was encouraging girls and women to pursue careers in science and mathematics. In 1996, she launched the Sally Ride EarthKAM project (Earth Knowledge Acquired by Middle school students), which allows students to take digital photos of Earth using a camera on the International Space Station.
In 2001, she started Sally Ride Science, a nonprofit company run by UC San Diego to inspire young people in science, technology, engineering, and math and to promote STEM literacy. She served as the President and CEO until her death from pancreatic cancer in 2012. During her lifetime, Sally Ride also wrote or co-wrote seven children’s books about space.
A Legacy We Can All Look Up To
Sally Ride broke many molds during her lifetime, and serves today as a role model for young people, girls, women, and aspiring scientists all over the world. Besides being the first American woman in space, she was just the third woman in space overall (after Soviet cosmonauts Valentina Tereshkova in 1963 and Svetlana Savitskaya in 1982). She remains the youngest American astronaut to have traveled to space (at the age of 32), and received countless awards and honors during her lifetime. She was added to the Astronaut Hall of Fame in 2003. After her death, it was revealed that Ride had had a nearly three-decades-long relationship with children’s science writer Tam O'Shaughnessy—making her the first known LGBT astronaut.
