Day 11 - Sally Ride

Sally Ride

I remember when the shuttle took off with Ride aboard, one of the commenters quoted the song, Mustang Sally: “Ride, Sally Ride!”

She was the first American woman in space. Ride devoted her entire life to science. She was born in 1951 and was (and remains) the youngest American in space when she lifted off on June 18, 1983 on STS-7 aboard the Challenger.

Sally was a Californian, interested in athletics and science. She flew on 2 shuttle missions and was an advocate for science and space exploration to young people, particularly girls. She served on both commissions that studied the two shuttle crashes. She was a physics professor at UC, San Diego and she also, along with her life partner Tam O’Shaughnessy, co-write 6 books for children and began Sally Ride Science, an outreach program for children, to encourage the study of science, especially among girls.

Sally died in 2012 and has been honored posthumously with the Medal of Freedom and there is a Navy research vessel named the Sally Ride.

I found this article interesting.

Here is a list of her children’s books:
To Space and Back (with Susan Okie)
The Mystery of Mars (with Tam O’Shaughnessy)
Exploring Our Solar system (with Tam O’Shaughnessy)
Mission: Planet Earth: Our World and its Climate (with Tam O’Shaughnessy)
The Third Planet: Exploring the Earth from Space (with Tam O’Shaughnessy)
Voyager: An Adventure to the Edge of the Solar system (with Tam O’Shaughnessy)

Lynn Sherr’s Biography of Sally Ride: Sally Ride: America’s First Woman in Space

Watch on YouTube