Sally Ride

Sally Ride applied to become a NASA astronaut after reading a newspaper advertisement. 

She had just received her masters and Ph.D. in physics from Stanford, and she was one of more than 8,000 applicants. Only 35 people were accepted, and just six of them were women.

Ride became the first American woman in space at 32 years old in 1983. Just 52 women have followed her out of the atmosphere.

Science journalists had little experience interviewing path-breaking women. Ride was asked in interviews before her historic trip whether she planned to pack makeup and bras, and how the mission would affect her reproductive organs.

“It’s too bad this is such a big deal. It’s too bad our society isn’t further along,” she said when asked about the media attention she was receiving at the time. “It’s time that we get away from that and it’s time that people realize that women in this country can do any job they want to do.”

“Ride, like the other five female astronauts chosen in the class of 1978, proved more than capable of breaking down the remaining barriers for women at NASA. In the process, Sally became a role model for all those women who followed her into future classes,” said NASA’s chief historian, Brian Odom.

Ride’s work to break gender stereotypes and combat sexism continued past her death from pancreatic cancer in 2012. Sally Ride Science is a nonprofit she established with her partner Tam O’Shaughnessy in 2001 to encourage all children to pursue a STEM education.

— Alex Gangitano