Sally Ride: Astronaut, Scientist, Educator

It was June 18, 1983. Ronald Reagan was the U.S. President. The Disney channel had been running a few months. The third Star Wars film, Return of the Jedi, was a month old. Michael Jackson had just released Billie Jean and introduced the world to his moonwalk dance step. Since April, 1981, the Space Shuttle program (officially called the Space Transportation System, or STS) had sent only six crewed missions into space (5 aboard Columbia and 1 aboard Challenger). It was 20 years since the Russians had sent up two female cosmonauts, the first women into space, and America was now sending up its first woman, Dr. Sally Ride. History was in the making.

Photo from thoughtco.com

Sally Ride was born on May 25, 1951 and graduated from prestigious Stanford University in 1973 with a Bachelor of Science degree in physics and a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature, and then two years later with a Master of Science degree in physics, and soon afterward with a Doctor of Philosophy in physics in 1978. She became interested in both sports and science at an early age. For example, she enjoyed working on brain teasers in Scientific American magazine, and she was inspired in junior high school by Dr. Elizabeth Mommaerts, who had a doctorate in human physiology and had chosen to work at Ride's school.

While she was studying for her PhD, she responded to an announcement by NASA, who was looking for women to join the new space shuttle program. Out of 8,079 applications for mission specialists, after six rounds of testing and interviews, she found herself as one of six women out of 35 accepted candidates.

NASA's first 6 female astronauts.

L/R: Shannon Lucid, Margaret Seddon, Kathryn Sullivan, Judith Resnick, Anna Fisher, Sally Ride

(from Women in Space Who Changed the World)

As a mission specialist, she and others were not expected to fly the shuttle, but it was wise to train on aircraft in even of an emergency. So, Ride learned how to fly a T-38 Talon jet aircraft and even took private lessons.

Photo courtesy of NASA

Her training included such things as basic science and math (no problem for the straight-A student who had taken a class in advanced math during the summer break in college), meteorology, guidance, navigation, and computer. Before her own first flight, she was assigned as part of the ground-support crew for the second and third shuttle flights (1981, 1982). One of those duties was as the first female capsule communicator ("CapCom") to relay information and instructions to the shuttle crew during flight. 

Ride at capsule communicator console, at Johnson Space Center mission control

during the STS-2 mission in July 1981 (NASA)

The 50-ft (15-m) robotic arm of the space shuttle was a spinoff of a Canadian design and was given the typical NASA abbreviation SRMS for Shuttle Remote Manipulator System. This familiar crane was used to release, repair, and retrieve various shuttle cargo (payloads). Ride was in charge of the training for its use and designing it prior to its initial use by astronauts Joe Engle and Richard Truly in 1981 aboard the second Columbia flight. Training involved practice in a DC-9 cabin and was considered extremely difficult. Ride was considered among the top two most proficient operators with the SRMS in training, and that played a role in selecting her for her first mission where it was necessary to use it.

SRMS being deployed on Columbia (Wikipedia)

Sally Ride became America's first female astronaut and the youngest at the time (32) when the Challenger lifted off on June 18, 1983 for its six-day mission. She was one of three mission specialists on board. Using the SRMS, Ride deployed two communications satellites. In addition, she also operated the robotic arm to deploy and retrieve a special pallet satellite which tested the effects of microgravity on metal alloys. During that part of the mission, she also used the SRMS to take the first pictures of the shuttle while it was in space. 

Challenger crew, June 1983 (Wikipedia)

Being a mission specialist meant using her academic training in physics, too. (After all, her PhD dissertation was "The interaction of X-rays with the interstellar medium".) Ride conducted an experiment aboard the shuttle to see how charged particles move through an electrified gel in microgravity, and another experiment to test how well the chemical reactions to form certain kinds of latex in space. She had the opportunity to fly on a second shuttle in 1984, where she used the robotic arm to deploy the Earth Radiation Budget satellite. At that time, she also studied the Earth's atmosphere and conducted some Earth science observations. All in all, she spent 343 hours doing science in space.

She wanted to be taken seriously as a scientist and mission specialist, not as a woman. For example, she and fellow astronaut Anna Fisher bought khaki pants so they would blend in with the men and not stand out in skirts. She was flooded with questions about how she as a woman would handle herself aboard the first shuttle flight. Many inappropriate questions were asked by the press. Are 100 tampons the right number for one week? How are you going to feel when your hair is weightless? Will you cry if something goes wrong on the shuttle? Will the flight affect your reproductive organs? Ride brushed them aside and tried to steer conversations toward the shuttle mission instead.

When the shuttle Challenger exploded on liftoff in 1986, she immediately joined the team to investigate. Information she had discreetly relayed to General Donald Kutyna was passed to Nobel laureate Richard Feynman, leading him to announce the cause of the disaster. Later, in 2003 when the Columbia shuttle broke up upon its return, she became part of that accident investigation board, too, and co-wrote the summary report. She was the only astronaut and only person to serve on both investigatory panels.

Ride attending the Challenger investigation (Associated Press)

Ride left NASA in 1987 to join the Stanford University Center for International Security and Arms Control (CISAC), where she researched how to count nuclear warheads from space. When that 2-year scholarship ended, she was accepted as a professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and director of the California Space Institute (Cal Space). She retired as professor emeritus in 2007.

Not losing complete attachment to NASA, Ride co-founded its educational outreach program EarthKAM (Earth Knowledge Acquired by Middle school students). Her design of installing cameras aboard the International Space Station allowed students to submit requests to take pictures of specific locations on Earth. Her science education company Sally Ride Science (founded 2001) made science programs and publications for upper elementary and middle school students, focusing on girls. It created the GRAIL MoonKAM (Moon Knowledge Acquired by Middle school students) program in 2011 to take photos of lunar features such as craters, highlands, and plains and learn about past and future landing sites. She also took over the space news website Space.com in 1999 for a few years. 

To show how much of an educator Sally Ride was, she also left behind a legacy of five books on science for children:

• To Space and Back (1989)
• Voyager: An Adventure to the Edge of the Solar System (1992)
• The Third Planet (1994)
• The Mystery of Mars (1999)
• Exploring Our Solar System (2003)

She has had a research ship the R/V Sally Ride named after her (the first for a female), a postage stamp made in her name, and many other science-related things such as spacecraft, satellites, an asteroid, and a moon probe crash site.

R/V Sally Ride (from Scripps Institute of Oceanography)

Ride was appointed to the President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) by President Clinton assess the risk of fissile materials (uranium-233, uranium-235, plutonium-239, and plutonium-241) being stolen in Russia and used by terrorists. She was a member of several organizations on education, as well, such as the Math and Science Initiative. President Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom a year after her death.

Sally's life partner Tam O'Shaughnessy accepting Ride's Presidential Medal of Freedom (Alamy)

Despite accolades and achievements and a serious dedication to providing science education to children, Ride was a very private person, sometimes even to her family. She was married briefly to fellow astronaut Steven Hawley, but she eventually became a life partner with tennis player and her children's book co-author Tam O'Shauhnessy, which was not made public until her death due to pancreatic cancer in 2012. Perhaps one statement she made sums up her view of being in science: "Scientific careers are not geeky."

Wikipedia does an excellent job of describing her achievements.

Read this LA Times cover story for an in-depth biography of Sally Ride, including many personal aspects of her life.