Sally Ride

Sally Kristen Ride (May 26, 1951 – July 23, 2012) was an American astronaut and physicist.

Sally Kristen Ride was born on May 26, 1951, in the Encino neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, the elder child of Dale Burdell Ride and Carol Joyce Ride.

She had one sibling, Karen, known as "Bear".

Both parents were elders in the Presbyterian Church.

Her mother, who was of Norwegian descent, had worked as a volunteer counselor at a women's correctional facility.

In 1960, when she was nine years old, the family spent a year traveling in Europe.

In Spain, Ride played tennis for the first time.

She enjoyed sports, tennis most of all, and at age 10 was coached by Alice Marble, a former world number one player.

By 1963 Ride was ranked number 20 in Southern California for girls aged 12 and under.

She attended Encino Elementary School, Portola Junior High (now Portola Middle School), Birmingham High School and then, as a sophomore on a tennis scholarship, Westlake School for Girls, an exclusive all-girls private school in Los Angeles.

Elizabeth Mommaerts, who taught human physiology, became a mentor.

Ride resolved to become an astrophysicist.

She graduated in June 1968, and then took a class in advanced math at Santa Monica College during the summer break.

Her friend Sue Okie was interested in going to Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, so Ride applied too.

She was interviewed by Fred Hargadon, the dean of admissions, who was impressed by both her mental and her tennis ability.

She was admitted on a full scholarship.

She commenced classes at Swarthmore on September 18, 1968.

She played golf, and made Swarthmore's field hockey varsity team.

She won all six of her intercollegiate tennis matches, and became the Eastern Intercollegiate Women's Singles champion.

She defended her title in May 1969, winning in straight sets.

However, Ride was homesick for California, and before Title IX, women's tennis was not well-supported at the college level; Swarthmore had four tennis courts but no indoor courts and she could not practice when it snowed.

After three semesters at Swarthmore, she returned to California in January 1970, with the aim of becoming a professional tennis player.

Ride was a graduate of Stanford University, where she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in physics and a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature in 1973, a Master of Science degree in 1975, and a Doctor of Philosophy in 1978 (both in physics) for research on the interaction of X-rays with the interstellar medium.

She was selected as a mission specialist astronaut with NASA Astronaut Group 8, the first class of NASA astronauts to include women.

Born in Los Angeles, she joined NASA in 1978, and in 1983 became the first American woman and the third woman to fly in space, after cosmonauts Valentina Tereshkova in 1963 and Svetlana Savitskaya in 1982.

She was the youngest American astronaut to have flown in space, having done so at the age of 32.

After completing her training in 1979, she served as the ground-based capsule communicator (CapCom) for the second and third Space Shuttle flights, and helped develop the Space Shuttle's robotic arm.

In June 1983, she flew in space on the on the STS-7 mission.

The mission deployed two communications satellites and the first Shuttle pallet satellite (SPAS-1).

Ride operated the robotic arm to deploy and retrieve SPAS-1.

Her second space flight was the STS-41-G mission in 1984, also on board Challenger.

She spent a total of more than 343 hours in space.

She left NASA in 1987.

Ride worked for two years at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Arms Control, then at the University of California, San Diego, primarily researching nonlinear optics and Thomson scattering.

She served on the committees that investigated the loss of Challenger and of Columbia, the only person to participate in both.

Having been married to astronaut Steven Hawley during her spaceflight years and in a private, long-term relationship with former Women's Tennis Association player Tam O'Shaughnessy, she is the first astronaut known to have been LGBT.

Her father served with the U.S. Army in Europe with the 103rd Infantry Division during World War II.

After the war he went to Haverford College on the G.I. Bill, earned a master's degree in education at the University of California, Los Angeles, and became a political science professor at Santa Monica College.

Ride grew up in the Van Nuys and Encino neighborhoods of Los Angeles.

She died of pancreatic cancer in 2012.