Sally Kristen Ride (born May 26, 1951) is an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
physicistA physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...
and a former
NASAThe National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an agency of the United States government, responsible for the nation's public space program. NASA was established by the National Aeronautics and Space Act on July 29, 1958, replacing its predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for...
astronautAn astronaut or cosmonaut is a person trained by a human spaceflight program to command, pilot, or serve as a crew member of a spacecraft....
who, in 1983, became the first American woman and then-youngest American to enter
spaceA low Earth orbit is generally defined as an orbit within the locus extending from the Earth’s surface up to an altitude of 2,000 km...
.
Ride was born in
EncinoEncino is a hilly district of the City of Los Angeles, California, United States. Specifically, it is located in the central portion of the southern San Fernando Valley and on the north slope of the Santa Monica Mountains...
, part of
Los Angeles, CaliforniaLos Angeles is the largest city in the state of California and the second largest in the United States. Often abbreviated as L.A. and nicknamed The City of Angels, Los Angeles has an estimated population of 3.8 million and spans over in Southern California...
, the eldest child of Carol Joyce (
néeA married name is the family name adopted by a person upon marriage, and in speaking of the many cultures where the practice is traditional for women, the maiden name is the family name that the married name replaces....
Anderson) and Dale Burdell Ride. Of
NorwegianNorwegians are a Northern European ethnic group found mostly in Norway and other Scandinavian countries, as well as many other countries in diaspora...
ancestry, Ride has a sister named Karen "Bearful" Ride, who is a Presbyterian minister. Ride attended
Portola Middle SchoolPortola Middle School is a middle school located in Tarzana, California in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. It provides public education for grades six through eight. The mascot is a Spanish conquistador, after Gaspar de Portolà, the school's namesake...
and Westlake School for Girls in Los Angeles (now
Harvard-Westlake SchoolHarvard-Westlake School is an independent, co-educational university preparatory day school consisting of two campuses located in Los Angeles, California, United States with approximately 1,600 students enrolled in grades 7 through 12...
) on a scholarship.
Sally Kristen Ride (born May 26, 1951) is an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
physicistA physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...
and a former
NASAThe National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an agency of the United States government, responsible for the nation's public space program. NASA was established by the National Aeronautics and Space Act on July 29, 1958, replacing its predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for...
astronautAn astronaut or cosmonaut is a person trained by a human spaceflight program to command, pilot, or serve as a crew member of a spacecraft....
who, in 1983, became the first American woman and then-youngest American to enter
spaceA low Earth orbit is generally defined as an orbit within the locus extending from the Earth’s surface up to an altitude of 2,000 km...
.
Early life
Ride was born in
EncinoEncino is a hilly district of the City of Los Angeles, California, United States. Specifically, it is located in the central portion of the southern San Fernando Valley and on the north slope of the Santa Monica Mountains...
, part of
Los Angeles, CaliforniaLos Angeles is the largest city in the state of California and the second largest in the United States. Often abbreviated as L.A. and nicknamed The City of Angels, Los Angeles has an estimated population of 3.8 million and spans over in Southern California...
, the eldest child of Carol Joyce (
néeA married name is the family name adopted by a person upon marriage, and in speaking of the many cultures where the practice is traditional for women, the maiden name is the family name that the married name replaces....
Anderson) and Dale Burdell Ride. Of
NorwegianNorwegians are a Northern European ethnic group found mostly in Norway and other Scandinavian countries, as well as many other countries in diaspora...
ancestry, Ride has a sister named Karen "Bearful" Ride, who is a Presbyterian minister. Ride attended
Portola Middle SchoolPortola Middle School is a middle school located in Tarzana, California in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. It provides public education for grades six through eight. The mascot is a Spanish conquistador, after Gaspar de Portolà, the school's namesake...
and Westlake School for Girls in Los Angeles (now
Harvard-Westlake SchoolHarvard-Westlake School is an independent, co-educational university preparatory day school consisting of two campuses located in Los Angeles, California, United States with approximately 1,600 students enrolled in grades 7 through 12...
) on a scholarship. In addition to being interested in science she was a nationally ranked tennis player. She attended
Swarthmore CollegeSwarthmore College is a private, independent, liberal arts college in the United States with an enrollment of about 1,500 students. The college is located in the borough of Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, 11 miles southwest of Philadelphia....
and then transferred to
Stanford UniversityThe Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university located in Stanford, California, United States...
, receiving a
bachelor's degreeA bachelor's degree is usually an academic degree awarded for an undergraduate course or major that generally lasts for four years, but can range from two to six years depending on the region of the world...
in
EnglishEnglish studies is an academic discipline that includes the study of literatures written in the English language , English linguistics English studies is an academic discipline that includes the study of literatures written in the English language (including literatures from the U.K., U.S.,...
and
physicsPhysics is a natural science; it is the study of matter and its motion through spacetime and all that derives from these, such as energy and force...
. She earned a
master's degreeA master's degree is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...
and a
Ph.D.Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated PhD , for the Latin , meaning "teacher of philosophy", or alternatively, DPhil, for the equivalent , is an advanced academic degree awarded by universities...
in physics also at Stanford, while doing research in
astrophysicsAstrophysics is the branch of astronomy that deals with the physics of the universe, including the physical properties of celestial objects such as galaxies, stars, planets, exoplanets, and the interstellar medium, as well as their...
and
free electron laserA free-electron laser, or FEL, is a laser that shares the same optical properties as conventional lasers such as emitting a beam consisting of coherent electromagnetic radiation which can reach high power, but which uses some very different operating principles to form the beam...
physics.
NASA career
Ride was one of 8,000 people to answer an advertisement in a newspaper seeking applicants for the space program. As a result, Ride joined
NASAThe National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an agency of the United States government, responsible for the nation's public space program. NASA was established by the National Aeronautics and Space Act on July 29, 1958, replacing its predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for...
in 1978. During her career, Sally served as the ground-based Capsule Communicator (CapCom) for the second and third Space Shuttle flights (
STS-2STS-2 was a space shuttle mission by NASA using the Space Shuttle Columbia, that launched on November 12, 1981 . This was the second space shuttle mission, and was also the second mission for Columbia...
and
STS-3STS-3 was the third space shuttle mission, and was the third mission for the Space Shuttle Columbia. It was the first launch with an unpainted external tank, and the only landing so far at the White Sands Space Harbor near Las Cruces, New Mexico.-Crew:...
) and helped develop the Space Shuttle's
robot armThe Shuttle Remote Manipulator System , or Canadarm , is a mechanical arm used on the Space Shuttle to maneuver a payload from the payload bay of the orbiter to its deployment position and then release it. It can also grapple a free-flying payload, maneuver it to the payload bay of the orbiter and...
. On June 18, 1983, she became the first American woman in space as a crew member on
Space ShuttleThe Space Shuttle, part of the Space Transportation System , is a spacecraft operated by NASA for orbital human spaceflight missions. It began operations in the 1980s and is scheduled to be retired from service in 2010 after 134 launches...
ChallengerSpace Shuttle Challenger was NASA's second Space Shuttle orbiter to be put into service, Columbia being the first. Its maiden flight was on April 4, 1983, and it completed nine missions before breaking apart 73 seconds after the launch of its tenth mission, STS-51-L on January 28, 1986, resulting...
for
STS-7STS-7 was a space shuttle mission by NASA using the Space Shuttle Challenger, launched June 18, 1983. This was the seventh space shuttle mission, and was the second mission for the Space Shuttle Challenger...
. (She was preceded by two
SovietThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...
women,
Valentina TereshkovaValentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova is the first woman in space, now a retired Soviet cosmonaut. Out of more than four hundred applicants and then out of five finalists, she was selected to pilot Vostok 6 on 16 June 1963 and become the first woman to fly in space...
in 1963 and
Svetlana SavitskayaSvetlana Yevgenyevna Savitskaya is a former Soviet female aviator and cosmonaut who flew aboard Soyuz T-7 in 1982, becoming the second woman in space some 19 years after Valentina Tereshkova. She is the daughter of Soviet military commander Yevgeniy Savitskiy...
in 1982.) On
STS-7STS-7 was a space shuttle mission by NASA using the Space Shuttle Challenger, launched June 18, 1983. This was the seventh space shuttle mission, and was the second mission for the Space Shuttle Challenger...
, during which the five-person crew deployed two communications satellites and conducted pharmaceutical experiments, Ride was the first woman to use the robot arm in space and the first to use the arm to retrieve a satellite. Her second space flight was in 1984, also on board the Challenger. She has cumulatively spent more than 343 hours in space. Ride had completed eight months of training for her third flight when the
Space Shuttle Challenger accidentThe Space Shuttle Challenger disaster occurred on January 28, 1986, when Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, leading to the deaths of its seven crew members. The spacecraft disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of central Florida, United States, at 11:39...
occurred. She was named to the Presidential Commission investigating the accident, and headed its subcommittee on Operations. After the investigation, Ride was assigned to NASA headquarters in Washington, DC. There she led NASA's first strategic planning effort, authoring a report entitled "
Leadership and America's Future in SpaceThe Ride Report is the informal name of the report titled NASA Leadership and America's Future in Space: A Report to the Administrator. In 1986, a task force under the leadership of Sally Ride was asked to formulate a new strategy for NASA. The report was issued in 1987.The Ride Report proposed...
", and founded NASA's Office of Exploration. Ride married fellow NASA astronaut Steve Hawley in 1982, but the two divorced in 1987.
After NASA
In 1987, Ride left to work at the
Stanford UniversityThe Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university located in Stanford, California, United States...
Center for International Security and Arms Control. In 1989, she became a professor of physics at the
University of California, San DiegoThe University of California, San Diego is a public research university located in La Jolla, San Diego, California, United States...
and Director of the California Space Institute. In 2003, she was asked to serve on the Space Shuttle Columbia Accident Investigation Board. She is currently on leave from the university, and is the President and CEO of
Sally Ride ScienceSally Ride Science was founded by astronaut Sally Ride, America's first woman in space, to support the large numbers of girls who are, or might become, interested in science, math and technology. The company creates innovative science experiences for girls that empower them, engage them, and...
, a company she founded in 2001, that creates entertaining science programs and publications for upper elementary and middle school students, with a particular focus on girls.
Ride has written or co-written five books on space, aimed at children with the goal of encouraging children to study science.
Ride is currently a member of the
Review of United States Human Space Flight Plans CommitteeThe Review of United States Human Space Flight Plans Committee is a group reviewing the human spaceflight plans of the United States...
an independent review requested by the
Office of Science and Technology PolicyThe Office of Science and Technology Policy is an office in the Executive Office of the President , established by Congress on May 11, 1976 with a broad mandate to advise the President on the effects of science and technology on domestic and international affairs.The director of this office is...
(OSTP) on May 7, 2009.
Awards and honors
Ride has received numerous honors and awards, including the Jefferson Award for Public Service, the von Braun Award, the Lindbergh Eagle, and the NCAA's
Theodore RooseveltTheodore Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States. He is well remembered for his energetic persona, his range of interests and achievements, his model of masculinity, and his "cowboy" image. He was a leader of the Republican Party and founder of the short-lived Bull Moose Party...
Award. She has been inducted into the
National Women's Hall of FameThe National Women's Hall of Fame was created in 1969 by a group of people in Seneca Falls, New York, the location of the 1848 Women's Rights Convention...
, and the
Astronaut Hall of FameThe United States Astronaut Hall of Fame is located in Titusville, Florida. It features the world's largest collection of personal astronaut memorabilia, particularly focusing on those astronauts who have been inducted into the Hall of Fame, as well as spacecraft.-History:In the 1980s, the then-six...
, and has twice been awarded the National Spaceflight Medal (or National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Space Flight Medal). Ride is the only person to serve on both of the panels investigating Shuttle accidents (those for the
Challenger accidentThe Space Shuttle Challenger disaster occurred on January 28, 1986, when Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, leading to the deaths of its seven crew members. The spacecraft disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of central Florida, United States, at 11:39...
and the
Space Shuttle Columbia disasterThe Space Shuttle Columbia disaster occurred on February 1, 2003, when the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas during re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere, with the loss of all seven crew members, shortly before it was scheduled to conclude its 28th mission, STS-107.The loss of Columbia...
). Two elementary schools in the United States are named after her: Sally K. Ride Elementary School in The Woodlands, Texas, and Sally K. Ride Elementary School in Germantown, Maryland.
On December 6, 2006,
CaliforniaCalifornia is the most populous state in the United States, and the third largest by area. California is the second most populous sub-national entity in the Americas, behind only São Paulo, Brazil...
GovernorA governor is a governing official, usually the executive of a non-sovereign level of government, ranking under the head of state...
Arnold SchwarzeneggerArnold Alois Schwarzenegger is an Austrian American bodybuilder, actor, businessman, and politician, currently serving as the 38th Governor of the state of California....
and First Lady
Maria ShriverMaria Owings Shriver is an award-winning American journalist and author, and the First Lady of California. She is married to actor and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and is a member of the Kennedy family.-Early life:...
inducted Ride into the
California Hall of FameConceived by First Lady Maria Shriver, the California Hall of Fame was established at The California Museum for History, Women and the Arts to honor legendary individuals and families who embody California’s innovative spirit and have made their mark on history...
, located at The California Museum for History, Women, and the Arts.
External links