Sally Ride First Women In Space Sally Ride, former NASA Astronaut, was born on May 26,1951 in Los Angeles, California. She graduated from West Lake High School in 1968 and received a Bachelor of science in physics and a Bachelor of arts in english in 1973 from Stanford University. She also received her Masters of science and a Doctorate degrees in physics from Stanford in 1975 and 1978. Dr. Ride is a physicist at the University of California. She also is the former director of the California space science institute.
Sally Ride at the age of 27 read about NASA's call for astronauts in the Stanford University paper. More than 8,000 men and women applied to the space program that year. 35 were accepted, 6 of them were women. One was Sally Ride. After joining NASA in 1977 Dr. Ride under went extensive training that included parachute jumping, water survival, gravity and weightlessness training, radio communications and navigation.
Space Shuttle Challenger's smoke plume after the i...
Sally Ride, the first American woman in space.
Sally Ride, First U.S. Woman in Space - GPN-2004-0...Durning the second and third flights of the space shuttle columbia November 1981 and March 1982, she served as communications officer, relaying radio messages from mission control to the shuttle crews. Dr. Ride also helped design the remote mechanical arm used by the shuttle crews to deploy and retrieve satellites. In 1983 she became the first women in space on the space shuttle challenger. Her second flight was an eight day mission in 1984, again on the challenger. Her total hours of space flight are more then 343. She was preparing for her third mission when the challenger exploded in 1986. When training was stopped she was appointed to the Presidential commission charged with investigating the accident. Dr. Ride retired from NASA in 1987. Dr. Ride has numerous awards for public service , the women's research and education institute's...