Sally Ride American physicist and former NASA astronaut Date of Birth: 26.05.1951 Country: USA

1. Biography of Sally Ride
2. Early Life and Education
3. Career at NASA and Space Missions
4. Later Career and Legacy

Biography of Sally Ride

Sally Ride was an American physicist and former NASA astronaut. She joined NASA in 1978 and became the first American woman and the youngest astronaut at the time, at the age of 32, to go to space in 1983.

Early Life and Education

Sally Ride was born on May 26, 1951, in Encino, Los Angeles, California. She was the eldest child in a family with Norwegian roots. She attended Portola Middle School and Westlake School for Girls in Los Angeles, where she received a scholarship. In addition to her interest in scientific disciplines, Sally also excelled in tennis and was listed as a nationally ranked young athlete.

After high school, Sally enrolled at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania but later transferred to Stanford University. She received a bachelor's degree in English and physics from Stanford. She then went on to earn her master's and doctoral degrees in physics from Stanford, conducting research in astrophysics and free-electron laser physics.

Career at NASA and Space Missions

Sally Ride was one of the 8,000 people who responded to NASA's call for candidates for the space program. During her career, she served as a Capsule Communicator (CapCom) during the second and third Space Shuttle flights and was involved in the development of the Space Shuttle's robotic arm.

On June 18, 1983, she made history as the first American woman in space as a crew member of the Challenger STS-7 mission. Prior to her, only two women had been to space, Valentina Tereshkova in 1963 and Svetlana Savitskaya in 1982. During the STS-7 mission, Sally and her crewmates deployed two communication satellites and conducted pharmaceutical experiments. She became the first woman to use the robotic arm in space and the first astronaut to use it for satellite retrieval.

Sally's second spaceflight also took place aboard the Challenger in 1984. In total, she spent 343 hours in space.

Later Career and Legacy

After completing her third spaceflight, Sally Ride had just finished an eight-month training program when the Challenger space shuttle disaster occurred in January 1986. She became a member of the presidential commission investigating the accident, leading one of its subcommittees. After the investigation, Sally was appointed to NASA's headquarters in Washington, D.C., where she led the strategic planning work and prepared a report titled "Leadership and America's Future in Space." She also organized a research division.

In 1982, Sally married fellow astronaut Steve Hawley, but they divorced in 1987. That same year, she left NASA and joined Stanford University's Center for International Security and Arms Control. In 1989, she became a professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego, and the director of the California Space Institute.

In 2003, Sally Ride was chosen to be part of the commission investigating the causes of the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster. Currently, she serves as the president and CEO of Sally Ride Science, a company she founded in 2001. She has authored and co-authored five children's books about space to encourage children's interest in scientific disciplines.

Sally Ride has received numerous awards, including the von Braun Award from the National Space Society and the Theodore Roosevelt Award from NCAA. She has been inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame and the Astronaut Hall of Fame, and she has been twice awarded the NASA Space Flight Medal. Two elementary schools have been named in her honor, one in Texas and one in Maryland.