Sally Ride facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Sally Ride
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Ride in 1984
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Sally Kristen Ride
May 26, 1951 Los Angeles, California, U.S.
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| Died | July 23, 2012 (aged 61) San Diego, California, U.S.
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| Education | Stanford University (BA, BS, MS, PhD) |
| Occupation | Physicist |
| Spouse(s) | |
| Partner(s) | Tam O'Shaughnessy (1985–2012; Ride's death) |
| Awards | Presidential Medal of Freedom (posthumous, 2013) |
| Space career | |
| NASA astronaut | |
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Time in space
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14d 07h 46m |
| Selection | 1978 NASA Group |
| Missions | |
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Mission insignia
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| Retirement | August 15, 1987 |
Sally Kristen Ride (May 26, 1951 – July 23, 2012) was an American astronaut and physicist. Born in Los Angeles, she joined NASA in 1978, and in 1983 became the first American woman and the third woman to fly in space, after cosmonauts Valentina Tereshkova in 1963 and Svetlana Savitskaya in 1982. She was the youngest American astronaut to have flown in space, having done so at the age of 32.
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Early life
Sally Kristen Ride was born on May 26, 1951, in the Encino neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. She was the elder child of Dale Burdell Ride and Carol Joyce Ride née Anderson. She had one sibling, Karen, known as "Bear". Her mother, who was of Norwegian descent, had worked as a volunteer counselor at a women's correctional facility. Her father served with the U.S. Army in Europe with the 103rd Infantry Division during World War II. After the war he went to Haverford College on the G.I. Bill, earned a master's degree in education at the University of California, Los Angeles, and became a political science professor at Santa Monica College.
Ride grew up in the Van Nuys and Encino neighborhoods of Los Angeles. She enjoyed sports, but tennis most of all, and at age 10 was coached by Alice Marble, a former world number one player. By 1963 Ride was ranked number 20 in Southern California for girls aged 12 and under.
Education
She attended Encino Elementary School, Portola Junior High (now Portola Middle School), Birmingham High School and then, as a sophomore on a tennis scholarship, Westlake School for Girls, an exclusive all-girls private school in Los Angeles. Ride resolved to become an astrophysicist. She graduated in June 1968, and then took a class in advanced math at Santa Monica College during the summer break.
Ride applied to Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. She was interviewed by Fred Hargadon, the dean of admissions, who was impressed by both her mental and her tennis ability. She was admitted on a full scholarship. She played golf, and made Swarthmore's field hockey varsity team. She won all six of her intercollegiate tennis matches, and became the Eastern Intercollegiate Women's Singles champion. But Ride was homesick for California. Also, Swarthmore had four tennis courts but no indoor courts and she could not practice when it snowed. After three semesters at Swarthmore, she returned to California in January 1970, with the aim of becoming a professional tennis player.
Ride entered the University of California, Los Angeles, where she enrolled in courses in Shakespeare and quantum mechanics, earning A's in both subjects. She was the only woman majoring in physics. She gave up the idea of becoming a professioanl tennis player, as she needed to practice for eight hours a day.
Ride applied for a transfer to Stanford University as a junior. She graduated in 1973 with a Bachelor of Science degree in physics and a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature. She then earned a Master of Science degree in physics in 1975 and a Doctor of Philosophy in 1978. Astrophysics and free-electron lasers were her areas of study. She wrote her doctoral dissertation on "the interaction of X-rays with the interstellar medium", under the supervision of Arthur B. C. Walker Jr.
NASA astronaut
In January 1977, Ride spotted an article on the front page of The Stanford Daily that told how the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was recruiting a new group of astronauts for the Space Shuttle program and wanted to recruit women. No women had previously been NASA astronauts, although the Soviet Union's cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova had flown in space in 1963. Ride mailed a request for, and received the application forms.
Ride's was one of 8,079 applications NASA received by the June 30, 1977, deadline. She then became one of 208 finalists. She was the only woman among the twenty applicants in the sixth group, all applicants for mission specialist positions, who reported to NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas, on October 3, for a week of interviews and medical examinations. Her physical fitness impressed the doctors. They also placed her in a Personal Rescue Enclosure to see if she suffered from claustrophobia. She was asked to write a one-page essay on why she wanted to become an astronaut. Finally, she was interviewed by the selection committee. On January 16, 1978, she received a phone call from George Abbey, NASA's director of flight operations, who informed her that she had been selected as part of NASA Astronaut Group 8. She was one of 35 astronaut candidates in the group, of whom six were women.
After completing her training in 1979, she served as the ground-based capsule communicator (CapCom) for the second and third Space Shuttle flights, and helped develop the Space Shuttle's robotic arm.
In June 1983, she flew in space on the Space Shuttle Challenger on the STS-7 mission. The mission deployed two communications satellites and the first Shuttle pallet satellite (SPAS-1). Ride operated the robotic arm to deploy and retrieve SPAS-1. Her second space flight was the STS-41-G mission in 1984, also on board Challenger. She left NASA in 1987.
First American woman in space
When the Space Shuttle Challenger lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) on June 18, 1983, Ride became the first American woman to fly in space, and the third woman overall. She also became the youngest American astronaut in space, although there had been younger cosmonauts. Many of the people attending the launch wore T-shirts bearing the words "Ride, Sally Ride", lyrics from Wilson Pickett's song "Mustang Sally".
The mission also studied Space adaptation syndrome, a bout of nausea frequently experienced by astronauts during the early phase of a space flight. Ride was not affected and did not require medication for the syndrome. Bad weather forced Challenger to land at Edwards Air Force Base in California instead of the Shuttle Landing Facility at the KSC. The mission lasted 6 days, 2 hours, 23 minutes and 59 seconds.
Now a celebrity, Ride, along with her STS-7 crewmates, spent the next few months after her flight on tour. She met with the Governor of California, George Deukmejian, and the Mayor of New York, Ed Koch. She testified before the Congressional Space Caucus on the efficacy of the robot arm, and addressed the National Press Club. The crew presented President Ronald Reagan with jelly beans that had been flown on the flight.
In September 1983, on her own initiative, she met with Svetlana Savitskaya, the second woman to fly in space, in Budapest. The two found an instant camaraderie, and they were able to converse for six hours, thanks to Savitskaya's command of English. They exchanged gifts: Savitskaya presented Ride with Russian dolls, books and a scarf, and Ride gave Savitskaya an STS-7 charm that had flown on the mission and a TFNG shirt. They also signed autographs for each other on Russian first day covers.
After NASA
Ride worked for two years at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Arms Control. At Stanford, her colleagues included Condoleezza Rice, a specialist on the Soviet Union.
On July 1, 1989, Ride became a professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and director of the California Space Institute (Cal Space), part of the university's Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Her research primarily involved the study of nonlinear optics and Thomson scattering. She remained director of Cal Space until 1996. She retired from UCSD in 2007 and became a professor emeritus.
From the mid-1990s until her death, Ride led two public-outreach programs for NASA—the ISS EarthKAM and GRAIL MoonKAM projects, in cooperation with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and UCSD. The programs allowed middle school students to request images of the Earth and the Moon.
From September 1999 to July 2000, Ride was the president of the space news website, Space.com, a company that aggregated news about science and space on its website. She then became the president and CEO of Sally Ride Science, a company she co-founded with O'Shaughnessy, who served as the chief executive officer and chair of the board. Sally Ride Science created entertaining science programs and publications for upper elementary and middle school students, with a particular focus on girls.
She served on the committees that investigated the loss of Challenger and of Columbia, the only person to participate in both.
Personal life
At Stanford, Ride renewed her acquaintance with Molly Tyson, who was a year younger than her. The two had met on the tennis circuit as junior tennis players. Although Ride was rated number one at Stanford and Tyson was number six, the two played doubles together and started a relationship. Tyson ended their relationship in 1975, and Ride moved in with Bill Colson, a fellow graduate physics student who was recently divorced.
In 1981, Ride began dating Steven Hawley, a fellow astronaut candidate on her team. They were married on July 26, 1982, in the backyard of Hawley's parents' house in Salina, Kansas. Ride flew up from Houston for the occasion in her Grumman Tiger, and wore white jeans. The ceremony was jointly conducted by Hawley's father Bernard, the pastor at the local Presbyterian church, and Ride's sister Bear. It was deliberately kept low-key, with only parents and siblings in attendance. They became the third NASA astronaut couple, after Rhea Seddon and Hoot Gibson, who had married a few months before, and Anna Fisher and her husband Bill Fisher, who became an astronaut couple when the latter was selected with NASA Astronaut Group 9 in 1980. Ride did not take her husband's name.
During 1985, Ride began an affair with Tam O'Shaughnessy. The two knew each other from the junior tennis circuit, and from when Ride was at Stanford. She divorced Hawley in June 1987.
Ride bought a house in La Jolla, California, and O'Shaughnessy moved in after taking up a teaching position at San Diego Mesa College. Ride and O'Shaughnessy co-wrote six books on space aimed at children, with the goal of encouraging children to study science.
Death
Ride died of pancreatic cancer on July 23, 2012, at the age of 61, at her home in La Jolla. Following cremation, her ashes were interred next to those of her father at Woodlawn Memorial Cemetery, Santa Monica. Her papers are in the National Air and Space Museum Archives of the Smithsonian Institution.
Interesting facts about Sally Ride
- Ride took up tennis at age 9 and wanted to become a professional tennis player in her college years.
- Ride enjoyed flying so much that she took private flying lessons to earn a private pilot's license.
- She spent a total of more than 343 hours in space.
- Ride's obituary publicly revealed for the first time that former Women's Tennis Association player Tam O'Shaughnessy had been her partner of 27 years. This made Ride the first known LGBT astronaut.
- In October 1986, she published a children's book, To Space and Back, which she co-wrote with Sue Okie, her high school and Swarthmore friend.
Sally Ride quotes
- "Science is fun. Science is curiosity. Science is a process of investigating. It's posing questions and coming up with a method. It's delving in."
- "For whatever reason, I didn't succumb to the stereotype that science wasn't for girls. I got encouragement from my parents. I never ran into a teacher or a counselor who told me that science was for boys."
- "When you're getting ready to launch into space, you're sitting on a big explosion waiting to happen."
Awards and honors
Ride received numerous awards throughout her lifetime and after.
- She received the National Space Society's von Braun Award, the Lindbergh Eagle by the Charles A. Lindbergh Fund, and the NCAA's Theodore Roosevelt Award.
- She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame and the Astronaut Hall of Fame and was awarded the NASA Space Flight Medal twice.
- Elementary schools in the United States were named after her, including Sally Ride Elementary School in The Woodlands, Texas, and Sally Ride Elementary School in Germantown, Maryland.
- In 1984, she received the Samuel S. Beard Award for Greatest Public Service by an Individual 35 Years or Under, an award given out annually by Jefferson Awards. * California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver inducted Ride into the California Hall of Fame at the California Museum for History, Women, and the Arts on December 6, 2006.
- The following year she was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton, Ohio.
- In December 2012, the Space Foundation bestowed upon Ride its highest honor, the General James E. Hill Lifetime Space Achievement Award.
- In April 2013, the United States Navy announced that a research ship would be named in honor of Ride. The RV Sally Ride (AGOR-28) was christened by O'Shaughnessy on August 9, 2014, and delivered to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 2016. It was the first vessel in the research fleet to be named after a female scientist.
- A "National Tribute to Sally Ride" was held at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., on May 20, 2013. That day, President Barack Obama announced that Ride would receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States. The medal was presented to O'Shaughnessy in a ceremony at the White House on November 20, 2013.
- In July 2013, Flying magazine ranked Ride at number 50 on their list of the "51 Heroes of Aviation".
- For their first match of March 2019, the women of the United States women's national soccer team each wore a jersey with the name of a woman they were honoring on the back; Tierna Davidson chose the name of Sally Ride.
- Ride was inducted into the Legacy Walk, an outdoor public display in Chicago that celebrates LGBT history and people, in 2014.
- She was honored with a Google Doodle on what would have been her 64th birthday in 2015. It was reused on International Women's Day in 2017.
- Stanford University's Serra House located in Lucie Stern Hall was renamed the Sally Ride House in 2019. T
- he U.S. Postal Service issued a first-class postage stamp honoring her in 2018, and Ride appeared as one of the first two honorees of the American Women quarters series in March 2022. She was the first known LGBT person to appear on U.S. currency.
- On 1 April 2022, a satellite named after Ride (ÑuSat 27 or "Sally", COSPAR 2022-033R) was launched into space as part of the Satellogic Aleph-1 constellation.
- The Cygnus spacecraft used for the NG-18 mission was named the S.S. Sally Ride in her honor. It launched successfully on November 7, 2022.
See also
In Spanish: Sally Ride para niños
