Sally Kristen Ride (1951-2012) was an American physicist and NASA astronaut who became the first American woman in space on June 18, 1983, flying as a mission specialist aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger on mission STS-7. At 32, she was also the youngest American to fly in space at that time.[1][2]
Ride flew twice, operated the shuttle's robotic arm that she had helped develop, and after the 1986 Challenger disaster served on the Rogers Commission that investigated it. When the shuttle Columbia broke apart in 2003, she joined that investigation as well, making her the only person to serve on both accident boards. Her post-NASA career centered on physics teaching and on Sally Ride Science, the education company she co-founded in 2001 to draw girls into science and engineering.[1][3]
Ride died of pancreatic cancer in 2012 at age 61. Her obituary disclosed, for the first time publicly, her 27-year relationship with Tam O'Shaughnessy, making Ride the first known LGBT astronaut.[4][5]
Education and selection
Ride was born on May 26, 1951, in Los Angeles. A nationally ranked junior tennis player, she considered a professional career before committing to physics. At Stanford University she earned bachelor's degrees in physics and English literature in 1973, a master's in 1975, and a Ph.D. in physics in 1978, with research on the interaction of X-rays with the interstellar medium and on free-electron lasers.[1][2]
In 1977 she saw an article in the Stanford student newspaper announcing that NASA was recruiting astronauts, including, for the first time, women. She applied along with about 8,000 others and in January 1978 was selected in NASA's Group 8, a class of 35 that included the agency's first six female astronauts. During training she worked on development of the shuttle's Canadian-built robotic arm and served as capsule communicator (CapCom) in Mission Control for the second and third shuttle flights, the first woman to hold that role.[1][2]
STS-7: first American woman in space
Ride launched on June 18, 1983, aboard Challenger on STS-7, a five-person crew commanded by Robert Crippen. The Soviet Union had flown Valentina Tereshkova in 1963 and Svetlana Savitskaya in 1982, so Ride was the third woman in space, but her flight carried outsized weight in the United States, where reporters pressed her with questions about makeup and weeping that she deflected with visible impatience. "It's too bad this is such a big deal," she said. "It's too bad our society isn't further along."[1][2]
The mission itself was heavy on satellite operations. The crew deployed communications satellites for Canada (Anik C2) and Indonesia (Palapa B1), and Ride used the robotic arm to deploy and then retrieve the German-built SPAS-01 free-flying pallet, the first retrieval of a satellite in orbit. Challenger landed at Edwards Air Force Base on June 24 after six days.[1][2]
Ride flew again on STS-41-G in October 1984, an eight-day Challenger mission with the first seven-person crew. Her crewmate Kathryn Sullivan performed the first spacewalk by an American woman, and the flight marked the first time two women flew in space together. Across her two missions Ride logged about 343 hours in space.[2][3]
Missions
| Mission | Dates | Shuttle | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| STS-7 | June 18-24, 1983 | Challenger | Mission specialist | First American woman in space; first satellite retrieval by robotic arm |
| STS-41-G | October 5-13, 1984 | Challenger | Mission specialist | First flight with two women aboard |
Challenger, Columbia, and the accident boards
Ride was training for a third flight when Challenger was destroyed 73 seconds after launch on January 28, 1986, killing its seven-member crew. President Reagan appointed her to the Rogers Commission, where she led the subcommittee on operations; she was the only active astronaut on the panel. After the investigation she moved to NASA Headquarters, where she wrote "NASA Leadership and America's Future in Space" (1987), a strategic planning study known as the Ride Report, and founded the agency's Office of Exploration.[1][3]
She left NASA in 1987 for the Center for International Security and Arms Control at Stanford, and in 1989 became a physics professor at the University of California, San Diego, and director of the California Space Institute. In 2003, after Columbia disintegrated during reentry, she served on the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, and she noted publicly that the organizational failures it found echoed those of 1986. No one else has served on both shuttle accident investigations.[1][3]
Sally Ride Science
In 2001 Ride co-founded Sally Ride Science with Tam O'Shaughnessy and three other colleagues. The company ran science festivals, teacher training, and book programs aimed particularly at middle-school girls, grounded in research showing that girls' interest in science often erodes in those years. Ride wrote or co-wrote several children's science books with O'Shaughnessy and led NASA-sponsored student camera projects, including EarthKAM on the International Space Station and MoonKAM on the GRAIL lunar orbiters. The organization continues today as a nonprofit at UC San Diego.[1][3]
Death and personal life
Ride was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in March 2011 and died on July 23, 2012, at her home in La Jolla, California, at 61. She had been married to fellow astronaut Steven Hawley from 1982 to 1987. The obituary she approved in her final weeks named Tam O'Shaughnessy, her business partner and a professor emerita of school psychology, as her partner of 27 years; the two had registered as domestic partners before her death. O'Shaughnessy later said Ride told her it was all right to be open about the relationship shortly before she died.[4][5]
Legacy
President Obama awarded Ride the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously in 2013, with O'Shaughnessy accepting. The Navy named an oceanographic research vessel R/V Sally Ride in 2016, the first such American ship named for a woman; she appeared on a U.S. quarter in 2022 in the American Women Quarters series; and schools, scholarships, and a Moon-facing camera legacy carry her name. NASA's astronaut corps, all male until her class, is now routinely mixed, and the Artemis program flew astronaut Christina Koch around the Moon in April 2026 as the first woman on a lunar mission. Ride's own summary of her flight remained characteristically direct: what mattered, she said, was that young women could now see someone like themselves in the job.[1][3][4]
References
- Sally Ride - Wikipedia.
- Sally Ride - Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.
- Biography: Sally Ride - National Women's History Museum.
- Sally Ride Kept Her Love Story Private. Her Partner Shares the Truth in a New Documentary - Biography.com.
- Sally Ride told her partner it was OK to come out 10 days before her death - The Advocate.
