On June 18, 1983, Space Shuttle Challenger climbed off Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center carrying a crew of seven to orbit on a mission to deploy communications satellites. Aboard was a major first for NASA and the US: Sally Ride was a Mission Specialist. In so doing, she became the first American woman in orbit.

Ride set another record that day. At 32, she became the youngest American to go to space, a record now held by Inspiration 4 astronaut Hayley Arceneaux, who was 29 when she flew in September 2021.

Noted space historian Emily Carney told Talk of Titusville today that, “Sally Ride’s contributions to spaceflight aren’t just notable because she was “the first.” By all accounts, she was among the best, if not the best, Shuttle robotic arm operator and a gifted engineer. Her talents set her apart among a group of exceptionally talented astronauts.”

Beginnings And An Ending That Came Too Soon

Born in 1951 in California, Sally Ride was not only a gifted student, she was also a terrific athlete. Athletics probably changed her life because Ride was talented enough in tennis to try turning pro. She originally attended Swarthmore University. While at school there, Ride got the idea to give pro tennis a try, so she left and picked up a racket full-time. After she trained intensely for a few months, she decided that pro tennis was not the life for her. She returned to college, this time at Stanford, where she earned two bachelor’s degrees, one in English and the other in physics. From there she focused on physics, earning a master’s and a PHd. in physics from Stanford in 1978.

While at Stanford in 1977, Ride saw an ad in the student newspaper seeking astronaut candidates for NASA’s next group. She applied and was eventually selected by NASA as one of six women for its 1978 Class (Group 8). She was joined by Anna Fisher, Shannon Lucid, Judy Resnik, Sally Ride, Rhea Seddon, and Kathryn Sullivan. There were also 29 men.

Why Was Sally Ride The First American Woman To Go To Space?

Ride’s selection for the STS-7 mission came down largely to the expertise she brought to the crew. While competition among the six women astronauts to become the first to fly was intense, with each bringing unique and advanced skill sets to the agency and eventually to the shuttle program, it was Ride who stood out for her proficiency with the shuttle’s robotic arm. Also in Ride’s favor was her experience working in Mission Control as CAPCOM for STS-2 and STS-3 in 1981 and 1982. That experience made her a familiar and trusted presence to flight controllers while also sharpening her knowledge of the Canadarm.

Because STS-7’s objectives included deploying and retrieving a satellite using the arm, Ride’s background made her an especially strong fit for the assignment. She was selected.

Eventually, all six women would fly to space.

After her selection, the press of the era fixated on her gender in ways that now read not only as absurd but also as deeply insulting to Ride and to women generally. She was asked whether spaceflight would damage her reproductive organs and whether she cried when things went wrong on the job. NASA asked her if 100 tampons were enough for a six-day mission. Ride answered those questions calmly and with class, and she never gave the press anything to denigrate herself, her role, or NASA generally, even if some reporters deserved her ire for their insolent questions.

Ride flew Challenger again in 1984 and was in training for a third mission when the Challenger accident grounded the fleet in 1986. Ride served on the Rogers Commission that investigated the disaster, then left NASA for academia and founded Sally Ride Science to encourage girls to pursue technical fields. She died in 2012 of pancreatic cancer, and her obituary revealed she had a partner of 27 years, Tam O’Shaughnessy, making her the first known LGBT astronaut. She was 61.

Not The First, But The First American In The Modern Era

Ride was not the first woman in space. The Soviet Union flew Valentina Tereshkova in 1963, almost exactly 20 years earlier to Sally Ride’s flight. But Ride opened the American door, and the numbers since tell the story of how far it swung open.

“The fact that I was going to be the first American woman to go into space carried huge expectations along with it,” Ride recalled in an interview for the 25th anniversary of her flight in 2008. “That was made pretty clear the day that I was told I was selected as a crew. I was taken up to Chris Kraft’s office. He wanted to have a chat with me and make sure I knew what I was getting into before I went on the crew. I was so dazzled to be on the crew and go into space I remembered very little of what he said.”

“On launch day, there was so much excitement and so much happening around us in crew quarters, even on the way to the launch pad,” Ride said. “I didn’t really think about it that much at the time – but I came to appreciate what an honor it was to be selected to be the first to get a chance to go into space.” — from NASA’s biography of Dr. Sally Ride

NASA reports it has selected 370 astronaut candidates since 1959, including 61 women. The agency’s 2025 candidate class was majority female for the first time in its history, with six women among the ten selected. Today, women are an integral and vital part of the astronaut corps, and they always will be.

An all-woman spacewalk Ride never saw came in 2019, when Christina Koch and Jessica Meir stepped outside the International Space Station together. The two would log three such excursions totaling nearly 22 hours while they successfully replaced a faulty 232-pound battery charge-discharge unit vital to the ISS electrical supply. For the pair, another day at the office. For the record books, a new entry.

Both names matter again now, because both have 2026 spaceflights on the docket: Koch was a crew member for Artemis II, which saw her become not only the furthest woman to travel away from Earth (252,756 miles or 406,771 kilometers), but also the fastest woman in history (24,527 MPH, or 39,472 kPH.) Meier is currently aboard ISS as Spacecraft Commander for Expeditions 74 and 75. Meier and Koch are also among the favorites to become the first woman on the moon on a later Artemis flight. Like the first woman to space, that’s a highly coveted mission and it is likely that the astronaut selected will be chosen as Ride was chosen: she will be the best fit for the mission profile.

The pipeline behind Koch and Meier is deep. NASA lists 15 women among its roughly 37 active astronauts eligible for flight. Jessica Watkins is in training to command SpaceX Crew-13, which would make her the first Black woman to command a mission to the station. Anna Kikina of Roscosmos is manifested for an upcoming Soyuz flight. Other women astronauts are in the Artemis program pipeline. More are joining the program with each new class.

Controversy Over NASA’s Next Flight, Artemis III.

On June 9, NASA announced the Artemis III crew at Johnson Space Center, and it contained no women. Commander Randy Bresnik, ESA pilot Luca Parmitano, Frank Rubio, and Andre Douglas will test rendezvous and docking in low Earth orbit no earlier than summer 2027.

The selection drew sharp criticism online, given that Artemis program planning had long promised the first woman on the Moon. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said the crew was chosen on experience, skill set, and availability, and noted that some female astronauts were committed to station expeditions or being held for later flights. Bresnik called the all-male outcome unintentional and said two more women are in training for a downstream Artemis mission. Who those two women are is a closely guarded secret within NASA, and they will be named at some future date.

Ride’s Legacy Of Excellence

Sally Ride is more than “just” the first American woman to fly to space aboard a NASA spacecraft. She left a legacy runs in two separate channels: her first flight changed who NASA flies, and what she chose to do with the visibility that being the first woman gave her.

The immediate effect was proof of concept. NASA’s 1978 class was the first to include women at all, and Ride’s 1983 flight settled, publicly and permanently, that the question of whether American women could do the job was not actually a question. The condescension she fielded at the time, the makeup kit, the 100 tampons for a six-day flight, and the reporters asking whether she cried read now as a snapshot of the assumptions her flight dismantled. Once she flew, the argument was over, even if the culture took longer to catch up.

The numbers since then show a slow but real shift. NASA has selected 61 women among its 370 astronaut candidates over its history, and the trajectory has steepened lately. The 2025 candidate class was majority female for the first time, six women out of ten. That is the structural legacy: a corps that no longer treats women as exceptional cases, where in 2026 a woman has flown around the Moon (Christina Koch on Artemis II), a woman commands a Crew Dragon to the station (Jessica Meir).

Other female astronauts have also had storied careers: Peggy Whitson, the former Chief Astronaut at NASA has spent 1.8 years (675 days) in space. Today, Whitson is an astronaut for Axiom Space. Eileen Collins was an elite Space Shuttle commander and test pilot. As pilot, she flew the Shuttle Discovery to the Mir space station.

As shuttle commander, Collins led the “Return to Flight” Mission after the 2005 Columbia disaster. She also became the first pilot to guide a shuttle through a complete flip so the crew on the International Space Station could photograph its belly for heat-shield damage. Sounds simple until you consider how close the maneuver was to ISS and how much precision flying it took to complete it. Collins is a pilot’s pilot, period. There are far too many accomplishments contributed to America’s space legacy to mention here, but circling back, it all began with Sally Ride aboard STS-7.

The more personal part of her legacy is what she did after NASA. Ride spent the rest of her life trying to convince girls that science and engineering belonged to them, founding Sally Ride Science and co-writing children’s books aimed at that goal. She also served on both the Challenger and Columbia accident investigation boards, the only person to do both, which made her a figure of institutional conscience as much as a barrier-breaker. And her posthumous disclosure of a 27-year partnership with Tam O’Shaughnessy added another dimension, making her a milestone in LGBT representation in a field that had been publicly silent on the subject, choosing to keep her private life private.

Perhaps Emily Carney put it best: “Her enduring legacy is one of great dignity and courage. She endured a press siege that would’ve, at best, annoyed her colleagues, but she kept her cool despite a barrage of silly questions and assumptions before her first spaceflight. After the Challenger disaster, her work on the Rogers Commission and her report on the future of spaceflight helped set the tone for future spaceflight safety and mission readiness. Her biggest impact is ongoing, as she has inspired countless young women to enter aerospace and persevere.”

Looking back from Sally Ride’s flight to today underscores what Ms. Carney said above. Sally Ride broke through the Karman Line with competence and grace, and as a great crewmate, scientist, and engineer. She proved not only that women belong in space but also that their skills are vital to space exploration.