Sally Ride
Joined NASA in 1978.
Prior to her first space flight, she was subject to media attention due to her gender. During a press conference, she was asked questions such as, "Will the flight affect your reproductive organs?" and "Do you weep when things go wrong on the job?"
In 1982, she married fellow NASA astronaut Steve Hawley. She became the first American woman in space in 1983.
At the age of 32, Ride remains the youngest American astronaut to have traveled to space.
She is the first known LGBT astronaut.
She flew twice on the Orbiter Challenger.
Sally and her husband, astronaut Steve Hawley divorced in 1987.
When she left NASA in 1987, she worked for two years at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Arms Control, then at the University of California, San Diego as a professor of physics.
She served on the committees that investigated the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters, the only person to participate in both.
Following the Challenger investigation, Ride was assigned to NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C.
She led NASA's first strategic planning effort, authored a report titled "NASA Leadership and America's Future in Space" and founded NASA's Office of Exploration.
Seventeen months after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, Ride died on July 23, 2012, at the age of 61, in her home in La Jolla, California.
Her obituary revealed that her partner of 27 years was Tam O'Shaughnessy, a professor emerita of school psychology at San Diego State University and childhood friend, who met her when both were aspiring tennis players.
O'Shaughnessy was also a science writer and, later, the co-founder of Sally Ride Science. They wrote six acclaimed children's science books together.
She received numerous awards throughout her lifetime and after. Sally received the National Space Society's von Braun Award, the Lindbergh Eagle, and the NCAA's Theodore Roosevelt Award. Ride was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame and the Astronaut Hall of Fame and was awarded the NASA Space Flight Medal twice. Two elementary schools in the United States are named after her: Sally Ride Elementary School in The Woodlands, Texas, and Sally Ride Elementary School in Germantown, Maryland.
In 1994, she received the Samuel S. Beard Award for Greatest Public Service by an Individual 35 Years or Under, an award given out annually by Jefferson Awards.
On December 6, 2006, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver inducted Ride into the California Hall of Fame at the California Museum for History, Women, and the Arts.
In 2007, Sally was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton, Ohio.
She directed public outreach and educational programs for NASA's GRAIL mission, which sent twin satellites to map the moon’s gravity.
December 17, 2012, the two GRAIL probes, Ebb and Flow, were directed to complete their mission by crashing on an unnamed lunar mountain near the crater Goldschmidt. NASA announced that it was naming the landing site in honor of Sally Ride.
The U.S. Navy announced In April 2013 that a research ship would be named in honor of Ride.This was done in 2014 with the christening of the oceanographic research vessel RV Sally Ride (AGOR-28).
May 20, 2013, a "National Tribute to Sally Ride" was held at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.
Also that same day, President Barack Obama announced that Ride would receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States. The medal was presented to her life partner Tam O'Shaughnessy in a ceremony at the White House on November 20, 2013.
Also in 2013, Flying magazine ranked Ride at number 50 on their list of the "51 Heroes of Aviation". The Space Foundation bestowed upon her its highest honor, the General James E. Hill Lifetime Space Achievement Award.
2014, Ride was inducted into the Legacy Walk, an outdoor public display that celebrates LGBT history and people.
2017, a Google Doodle honored her on International Women's Day.
in 2018 the U.S. Postal Service issued a first-class postage stamp honoring Ride.
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