On the morning of June 18, 1983, thousands of people flocked to the beaches in Florida just south of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center to watch history being made. As the crew of the STS-7 mission lifted off from launch pad 39A, Dr. Sally K. Ride became the first American woman in space.
Her flight, aboard the space shuttle Challenger, itself challenged long-held stereotypes about who would make a good space traveler.
But Sally Ride’s impact goes beyond being “first.” Throughout her life of science and service, she was a physicist, educator, and advocate for girls and women in STEM. She was an athlete, author, and role model. And, since her untimely death in 2012, Ride has become a posthumous queer icon. She blazed a trail for girls, women and queer people to see themselves reflected in those who have been to space, her example inviting more people to get curious about science and space exploration.
Curiosity about the world was a defining feature of the childhood of Sally Kristen Ride. Growing up in Encino, California, in the 1950s Ride and her younger sister Bear often did science experiments at home with their microscope kit. They also enjoyed looking at the stars through their telescope together.
As a high school student at Westlake School in Los Angeles, Ride excelled in the classroom and on the tennis court. She especially enjoyed her calculus and physics classes and decided to major in astrophysics in college. As captain of Westlake’s tennis team, Ride continued to build on the skills she honed on the competitive youth tennis circuit. Tennis was more than a sport to Ride–it was a source of community. Her childhood tennis friendships, including with her future partner Tam O’Shaughnessy, endured throughout her life.
In fall 1968 Ride began her studies at Swarthmore College outside Philadelphia. She loved physics, though the classes were challenging, but ultimately left Swarthmore to explore the possibility of a professional tennis career. She returned to California and began training and competing across the West Coast.
Ride soon realized that science–not sport–was the path for her. In fall 1970, she transferred to Stanford University, where she double majored in physics and English literature. She studied at Stanford for eight years, earning her doctorate in physics in 1978.
As she neared graduation, Ride learned that NASA was recruiting mission specialists – scientists who would conduct experiments on the new space shuttle. She sent in an application. Her expertise as a physicist and the determination and teamwork she learned on the tennis court were some of the qualities that made Ride a strong candidate. Out of a pool of more than 8,000 applicants, Ride stood out, and NASA admitted her into Astronaut Group 8.
The 35 members of Astronaut Group 8 included six women, all of whom held advanced degrees in science, engineering, and medicine. Despite their qualifications, Ride and her peers did not have any women role models in space travel. For the first 25 years of U.S. human spaceflight, women who aspired to space travel had no path to the stars. In the late 1950s, NASA and government leaders assembled America’s astronaut corps from the ranks of elite military test pilots – a profession from which women were barred due to biases about their ability to excel in high-risk, highly technical roles.
Two decades later, the civil rights and second wave feminist movements had begun reshaping societal attitudes about women’s work. When NASA began recruiting astronauts for its space shuttle program in 1977, the agency looked to women, for the first time, to carry out critical work in space.
The pressure was on these trailblazers in Astronaut Group 8—Drs. Anna Fisher, Shannon Lucid, Judith Resnik, Sally Ride, Rhea Seddon and Kathryn Sullivan—to prove to the remaining skeptics and naysayers that a woman’s place could include space.
Ride and the rest of Group 8 trained for years before traveling into space, developing skills and supporting other missions from the ground. Ride became an expert in the Remote Manipulator System (NASA-speak for the space shuttle’s robotic arm), an important tool that enabled astronauts to deploy and retrieve satellites from the space shuttle’s cargo bay. NASA leadership assigned Ride to the critical role of “CapCom” (capsule communicator) for the second ever space shuttle mission. She was responsible for communicating between Mission Control and the crew of STS-2 in space.
Ride’s technical expertise and spirit of cooperation garnered the respect of her colleagues. She became the first woman of Group 8 to receive a flight assignment. As a mission specialist on the crew of STS-7 (June 18-24, 1983), Ride deployed satellites using the shuttle’s robotic arm and enjoyed looking back on Earth from space.
Sixteen months later, Ride was back in space, this time with Group 8 classmate Kathy Sullivan. STS-41G (October 5 -13, 1984) marked the first U.S. space mission with two women crewmembers. Again using the robotic arm, Ride deployed an Earth-observing satellite that enabled scientists to study global changes to climate for more than 20 years.
On the ground, Ride played a critical role in significant projects that shaped the course of the U.S. space program. Only 15 months after her second flight on Challenger, Ride served on the Rogers Commission to investigate the causes of the fatal space shuttle Challenger disaster in January 1986, which killed the seven crew members of STS-51L. The Commission’s recommendations improved safety for Ride’s fellow shuttle astronauts and future space travelers. Later, in 2003, she served on the Columbia Accident Investigation Board after the second fatal shuttle accident.
Her work looked back, to improve safety measures, but also forward to the unknown future. At NASA’s request, Ride led a group in envisioning the next chapter of the space program. Their findings, commonly known as the “Ride Report” and published in 1987, identified four key areas of activity, including studying the Earth from space, exploring the solar system, and sending humans to the Moon and to Mars.
When Ride retired from NASA in 1987, she dedicated herself to educating and inspiring learners. For more than 18 years she taught physics at the University of California San Diego. In 2001, Ride founded Imaginary Lines (now Sally Ride Science) with her partner, Dr. Tam O’Shaughnessy, to inspire girls and young women. A professor of school psychology, O’Shaughnessy brought her expertise to bear on the programming of Sally Ride Science. The organization’s signature event was a series of nationwide Sally Ride Science festivals.
Ride and O’Shaughnessy first met on the competitive youth tennis circuit in southern California. Their childhood friendship blossomed into a relationship shortly after Ride’s first space mission. Throughout their 27-year relationship, Ride and O’Shaughnessy were collaborators at Sally Ride Science, as well as co-authors. Together, they wrote six children’s books about science, including the award-winning Mission: Planet Earth, an introduction to climate science informed by Ride’s observations of Earth from space.
As a public figure, Ride kept her personal life—including her relationship with O’Shaughnessy—private. This was not an easy task given enduring public interest in the lives of astronauts. Ride’s friend and biographer Lynn Sherr connects her private nature to her stoic Norwegian heritage and, significantly, to the broader culture of homophobia in which Ride and O’Shaughnessy lived and worked. Had they come out as a couple, prejudice could have very well prevented them from continuing their important advocacy work.
At the age of 61, Ride passed away from cancer. Tributes from around the world celebrated her impactful public life. O’Shaughnessy’s obituary quietly recognized the lesser-known personal life of America’s first woman in space. In a conversation shortly before Ride died, she entrusted O'Shaughnessy with the responsibility of deciding whether to share their partnership with the world. Some people immediately embraced Ride as a posthumous queer icon. Others criticized her for not coming out sooner to serve as a role model for LGBTQ youth.
Forty years after her first spaceflight, Ride continues to inspire others. In 2013 she was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. As Ride’s partner, O’Shaughnessy accepted the medal from President Barack Obama. Her legacy of science and service lives on at NASA and Sally Ride Science, on US currency and stamps, and in popular culture, and in museums.
The Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum is fortunate to steward a collection of Ride’s objects and archival records–from her childhood tennis racquet to her STS-7 flight suit to notes from her NASA career. Since O’Shaughnessy donated this collection in 2013, the Museum digitized the contents so learners around the world can take inspiration from Ride’s life and career. The Museum tells Ride’s story by displaying these objects and recognizing her life and legacy at Sally’s Night. Held each June around the anniversary of her first spaceflight, this annual event invites people to celebrate Ride and all of the women who have contributed to science and space exploration.
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