Sally+Ride

Sally Kristen Ride was born on May 26th, 1951 in Encino, California (close to los angeles) to Joyce Ride and Dale B. Ride. She enjoyed many sports including tennis, running, volleyball, and softball. she loved tennis and was a good player she even was awarded a tennis scholarship to westlake school for girls in los angeles. she dropped out of swarthmore college to attempt to go pro at tennis. However, this didnt work out for her so she eventually just turned her head back to her education and started attending stanford university. While attending stanford she received her bachelors degree in physics and english in 1973. She also earned a PH. D. in Astrophysics in 1978. She was looking to persue a career in Astrophysics. When looking in stanford university's newspaper one day she read about a calling for astronauts from N.A.S.A. She applied and was accepted as one of the six woman of 35 people that were accepted into the program. Sally began astronaut training in 1978 and completed it in august of 1979.
 * Sally Kristen Ride (Ph.D.)**


 * Impact**

On June 18th, 1983 sally ride made history for being the first woman in space, she boarded the shuttled named the "challenger" for a six day mission in which they deployed satellites for Canada and Indonesia. She had special tasks on this mission and hers was to deploy satellites with a robot arm and helping the commander and the pilot during take off and landing. Then in 1984 she was assigned to another mission on the "challenger", however this mission was 8 days long instead of six. It launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida on October 5th. It was the largest crew up until then to ever go into space. After this mission she had a total of over 343 hours in space. In 1986, sally was preparing for another mission into space when the shuttle "challenger" exploded. The training was suspended and she was appointed to the presidential commission that was investigating the accident. Not long after she moved to the NASA headquarters in Washington D.C. where she became the assistant to the NASA administrator for long range and strategic planning. She also made the "Office Of Exploration" for NASA and made some reports on some of the future of the space program.


 * Later Years**

In 1987, she left NASA to accept a fellowship that had been offered to her by Stanford Univerity center for International security and arms controll. Then in 1989, She was appointed the director of the California Space Institute and a Professor of Physics at the University of California in San Diego.