Early on the morning of June 18, 1983, the space shuttle Challenger roars off of Kennedy Launch Complex 39 beginning a six-day mission to deploy two communications satellites and the first “Shuttle Pallet Satellite” which carries 10 experiments, including testing ways of forming metal alloys in microgravity. Minutes after leaving the launch pad, the Challenger reaches an altitude of 50 miles and Sally Ride officially becomes the first American woman in space.
Sally Ride is born in Encino in 1951. She graduates from Stanford University with bachelor’s degrees in English and physics. Ride later earns a masters and doctorate in physics from there as well.
Within months of earning her PhD, Ride is selected to join NASA Astronaut Group 8, which also includes the first American woman to conduct a spacewalk (Kathryn Sullivan) and the first American woman to make a multi-month space flight (Shannon Lucid).
In her career with NASA, Ride serves twice as Mission Specialist on spaceflights, the second of which makes her a member of the first crew with two-female astronauts. Her third scheduled flight is cancelled after the Challenger is explodes shortly after launch on January 28, 1986.
Ride leaves NASA after nearly a decade to become a professor at the University of California at San Diego. It isn’t until after her death in 2012 that the world learns about her orientation.
In 2001, Ride and Tam O’Shaughnessy, her partner for nearly three decades, co-found the non-profit, “Sally Ride Science.”
Ride remains the youngest American astronaut to have traveled to space. She’s 32 at the time of her first spaceflight.