Sally Ride
Sally Ride
Sally Kristen Ridewas an American physicist and astronaut. Born in Los Angeles, she joined NASA in 1978 and became the first American woman in space in 1983. She remains the youngest American astronaut to have traveled to space, having done so at the age of 32. After flying twice on the Orbiter Challenger, she left NASA in 1987. She worked for two years at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Arms Control, then at the University of California, San...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAstronaut
Date of Birth26 May 1951
CityLos Angeles, CA
CountryUnited States of America
The fact that I was going to be the first American woman to go into space carried huge expectations along with it.
Different astronauts sleep in different ways.
Because I was a tennis player, Billie Jean King was a hero of mine.
The most anxious time was during launch, just because that is so dramatic.
I liked math - that was my favorite subject - and I was very interested in astronomy and in physical science.
After the Challenger accident, NASA put in a lot of time to improve the safety of the space shuttle to fix the things that had gone wrong.
Rocket science is tough, and rockets have a way of failing.
My background is in physics, so I was the mission specialist, who is sort of like the flight engineer on an airplane.
But when I wasn't working, I was usually at a window looking down at Earth.
For quite some time, women at NASA only had scientific backgrounds.
I did not come to NASA to make history.
Some astronauts sleep in sort of beds - compartments that you can open up and crawl into and then close up, almost like a little bedroom.
So I saw many planets, and they looked just a little bit brighter than they do from Earth.
The pressure suit helps if something goes wrong during launch or re-entry - astronauts have a way to parachute off the shuttle. The suits protect you from loss of pressure in case of emergency.