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Sally Kirsten Ride - First Woman in Space |
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Sally Ride was born May 26, 1951 in Encino, California. She was an avid tennis player and even landed a scholarship at Westlake School for Girls in Los Angeles. Post graduation in 1968 she decided to attend Swarthmore College, and dropped out to try for a professional tennis career. Her continuous hard work had her determined she could not make it as a professional, so she quit and enrolled at Stanford University. In 1977 she had earned a Bachelors of Arts, a Bachelors of Science, and masters’ degrees. She was a Ph.D. looking into astrophysics when she read about NASA in the Stanford paper. Out of the 8,000 applicants for the space program, 35 were accepted and six of which were women-- one of those was Sally Ride. |
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Later that year, Sally went from rigorous astronaut training including the following: parachute jumping, water survival, gravity and weightlessness training, radio communications and navigation, to being a communications officer in November 1981 and March 1982. When 1983 came around, Dr. Sally Kirsten Ride was officially named the first woman in space on the shuttle Challenger (STS-7). She has spent more than 343 hours in space during flights. After the Challenger exploded in 1986, Sally was appointed to the Presidential Commission charged with investigating the accident. She then moved to NASA headquarters in Washington D.C., and produced a report on the future space program. In 1987 Ride retired from NASA and became a Science Fellow at the Center for International Security and Arms Control at Stanford University. Two years passed and she was appointed Director of the California Space Institute and Professor of Physics at the University of California. |
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Mid year in 1999 Sally joined a website called space.com and later that year was made president. She was president until September 2000. Her awards are numerous, including the Jefferson Award for Public Service, the Lindbergh Eagle, the NCAA’s Theodore Roosevelt Award, the von Braun Award, and has been inducted into National Women’s Hall of Fame and the Astronaut Hall of Fame. For a list of Sally’s character traits, a poetic ode, and more, click here. For a full bibliography, click here. |
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“Sally Kirsten Ride - A Brief Biographical Sketch” ©2009 Hayley Turner Solely for Venture O1 All rights reserved. |