Science: Space: Sally Kristen Ride

Essay by modpunkskaluvrHigh School, 11th gradeA+, April 2004

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SALLY KRISTEN RIDE

Sally Ride was a United States astronaut who became the first American woman to travel in space. She launched in June 1983, with astronauts Robert L. Crippen, John M. Fabian, Frederick H. Hauck, and Norman E. Thagard and made a six-day flight on the space shuttle Challenger. On their flight in the shuttle Challenger, they tested out the Challenger's remote manipulator arm. They then used the arm again on her second flight, in October of 1984, to launch a satellite used to measure the sun's effect on the earth's weather. These are just some of the operations, and flights that Ride went on.

Sally ride was born on May 26, in 1951 in Los Angeles, California. She was a hard worker in school, and at the age of twenty-seven years old, she started working on her Ph. D. in astrophysics. It was then that Sally noticed a call for astronauts in the Stanford University paper.

It was from NASA, and over eight thousand candidates applied, but only thirty-five were accepted; six of the thirty-five were women, and of course Sally Ride was one of them, (or we wouldn't be talking about this would we?) Then, in 1978, she received a Ph. D. degree in physics from Stanford University and tried to become an astronaut.

She later moved to Washington, DC and became deeply involved in the long-range planning going on for NASA. She then later created the Office of Exploration for NASA, and wrote a report on the future of the space program, and has also written a book for children to help them learn about space, entitled: To Space and Back. She has also written Voyager: An Adventure to the Edge of the Solar System and The Third Planet: Exploring the Earth from...