Ride, Sally (Kristen)

(born May 26, 1951, Encino, Calif., U.S.) U.S. astronaut. She received a Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University in 1977 and joined NASA the same year. In 1983 she participated in the seventh space-shuttle mission, aboard the Challenger, as flight engineer, becoming the first American woman and the third woman internationally (after the Russians Valentina Tereshkova [1963], and Svetlana Savitskaya [1982]) to fly into outer space. She went on to become director of the California Space Institute at UC–San Diego in 1989. From 1999 Ride worked on Internet-based projects related to space and pursued her longtime interest in encouraging young women to study science and mathematics.

Ride, Sally (Kristen) (1951– ) astronaut, astrophysicist; born in Encino, Calif. Selected for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) astronaut program out of 1,000 female candidates (1978), she became the first American woman in space on the space shuttle Challenger (1983). Known for solving difficult engineering problems and being a team player, she served on a presidential commission investigating the Space Shuttle Challenger accident (1986), and as special assistant to the administrator, NASA (1987).