Sally Ride

Doctor Sally Ride was born in 1951 in California. She got her Ph.D. in astrophysics at Stanford University, and applied to be an astronaut at NASA. In 1977, she was accepted and began to train to be an astronaut.

Before going into space, Dr. Ride worked as a communications officer for the space shuttle Columbia. Her job was to send radio messages from the space shuttle to the mission control on Earth.

On June 18, 1983, Dr. Ride became the first American woman to travel in space. She flew on the shuttle Challenger. Her second (and last) space flight was the eight-day Challenger mission in 1984.

Dr. Ride was training for a third mission when the space shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986. The mission was cancelled, and Ride helped to investigate why the space shuttle exploded.