Sally K. Ride, PhD (1951-2012)

“The best advice I can give anybody is to try to understand who you are and what you want to do, and don’t be afraid to go down that road and do whatever it takes and work as hard as you have to work to achieve that.” - Sally Ride, in her interview with the Academy of Achievement.

Sally Kristen Ride was born on May 26th, 1951. Ride was a physicist and the first American woman and the first queer person to fly in space. She completed astronaut training in 1979 and departed on her first flight into space in June of 1983 with the Challenger on the STS-7 mission. Her second space flight was in 1984, aboard the challenger again on the STS-41-G mission. After the Challenger disaster in 1986, Ride led one of the first NASA strategic Planning comittees. She wrote a report entitled "NASA Leadership and America's Future in Space" also known as the "Ride Report", in which Ride made a new strategy for NASA. She left NASA in 1987 with over 300 hours spent in space.

After leaving NASA, Ride took on a multitude of educational endevors. She served as a professor at the University of California, San Diego, she led public-outreach programs for NASA, was president of a space news website, and created nurmerous different programs and camps for girls that wanted to study STEM. Ride created Sally Ride Science with Tam O'Shaughnessy (Later to be known as Sally Ride's partner), a company that created educational programs, publications, lesson plans, and other materials for science students. President Bill Clinton reached out to Ride to become the NASA Administrator but Ride declined the offer.

Ride passed in 2012 of pancreatic cancer. Her obituary was the first time it was publically known that O'Shaughnessy was her partner and that Ride identified as queer. Ride recieved many awards over her career and life, some of the most notable ones are as follows: Inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame and the Astronaut Hall of Fame, the NASA Space Flight Medal (twice), and the Presidental Medal of Freedom. In 2022, a statue of Ride was built infront of the Cradle of Aviation Museum and in 2023 a statue was also built in front of the Ronald Reagan Presidental Library.

Read more about Sally Ride, PhD:

NASA Johnson Space Center Oral HIstory Project - Sally Ride Transcript

Sally Ride - First American Woman in Space | NASA

Sally Ride | National Women's History Museum