NASA Astronaut Sally Ride: First American Woman in Space—40th Anniversary

NASA Astronaut Sally Ride: First American Woman in Space—40th Anniversary

NASA Astronaut Sally Ride - Official NASA Portrait (July 10, 1984)

Sally Ride with Launch & Entry Helmet

(Sept. 24, 1985)

Sally Ride—first American woman in space—during STS-7 mission (June 24, 1983)

Sally K. Ride, STS-7 Mission Specialist in a T-38 jet aircraft, Houston, Texas (June 15, 1983)

Astronaut Sally K. Ride, STS-7 mission specialist stands in mid deck of orbiting Space Shuttle Challenger (June 21, 1983)

Sally K. Ride displays the array of tools at her disposal during STS-7 mission (June 18-24, 1983)

Sally Ride floating freely on the flight deck while performing several functions simultaneously (June 21, 1983)

Sally Ride on the flight deck of the space shuttle Challenger (June 18, 1983)

On June 18, 1983, NASA Astronaut Sally K. Ride became the first American woman in space, when she launched with her four crewmates aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger on mission STS-7. Ride and five other women had been selected in 1978 for NASA Astronaut Group 8, the first American selection class to include women. With the advent of the space shuttle, NASA expanded astronaut selection from only pilots to scientists and engineers, and women became eligible for selection. NASA announced Ride and her classmates to the public on Jan. 16, 1978.

Ride served as Capsule Communicator (CAPCOM) for STS-2 and STS-3 in late 1981 and early 1982, and became an expert in the use of the shuttle’s robotic arm. On April 30, 1982, NASA announced that Ride would serve as a Mission Specialist on STS-7, a satellite deployment and retrieval mission on board the Space Shuttle Challenger. Her crewmates were Commander Robert L. Crippen, Pilot Frederick H. “Rick” Hauck, and Mission Specialist John M. Fabian. NASA added physician-astronaut Norman E. Thagard to the crew in January 1983. Thagard’s addition then marked the largest crew flown in a single spacecraft to date.

During the six-day mission, the most complex in the shuttle program at that time, the crew launched two commercial communications satellites, Anik C3 for Canada’s Telesat and Palapa B2 for Indonesia. Ride used the Shuttle’s robotic arm to deploy the first Shuttle Pallet Satellite (SPAS-01) and retrieve it two days later, the first time the Shuttle was used to return a spacecraft to Earth. 

Ride’s launch on STS-7 occurred almost to the day of the 20th anniversary of the launch of the first woman in space, Soviet cosmonaut Valentina V. Tereshkova. Tereshkova launched into space June 16, 1963, aboard Vostok-6 using the call sign Chaika (чайка), or Seagull. She circled the Earth 48 times over three days and made a successful parachute landing June 19, 1963.

Sally Ride and Valentina Tereshkova made their marks on history.  Despite the camaraderie between astronauts and cosmonauts even during the height of the Cold War and the thaw afterwards, there’s no indication that the two ever met.  In their own ways, the two were trailblazers for women who followed their footsteps.

For more information, read Sally Ride’s oral histories with the JSC History Office: 

https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/RideSK/RideSK_10-22-02.htm

Image & Story Credit:  NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC)

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