Meet Sally Ride

 When she blasted off aboard Challenger on June 18, 1983, Sally became the first American woman—and, at 32, the youngest American—in space. Sally flew alongside her four male crewmates, Commander Robert Crippen, pilot Frederick Hauck, and fellow mission specialists John Fabian and Norman Thagard. During the six days of mission STS-7, she deployed and retrieved a satellite with the robotic arm. The crew also performed a variety of scientific experiments. The mission lasted 147 hours before Challenger landed at Edwards Air Force Base, California, on June 24.

Sally performed her duties with calm competence, demonstrating to the world below that women belonged on space missions. She later said of the experience, “The thing that I’ll remember most about the flight is that it was fun. In fact, I’m sure it was the most fun I’ll ever have in my life.”

Her second shuttle flight made history as the first space mission with two female crew members. When Challenger blasted off for STS-41G on Oct. 5, 1984, Sally was joined by Kathryn Sullivan as well as five male crewmates – Crippen (once again serving as commander), Jon McBride, David Leestma, Marc Garneau and Paul Scully-Power. During the eight-day mission, Sullivan became the first American woman to walk in space.

The crew conducted scientific observations of Earth and deployed a satellite designed to investigate how Earth absorbs and then reflects energy from the sun. After 197 hours of flight, Challenger landed at Kennedy Space Center on Oct. 13.

Sally was training for a third mission when Challenger exploded shortly after liftoff on Jan. 28, 1986, killing all seven crew members. She was named to the presidential commission investigating the disaster, and she helped bring to light the fact that NASA management knew the shuttle’s O-rings could fail in cold temperatures.

Later, when shuttle Columbia broke up on reentry in 2003, Sally again was appointed to the investigative panel, becoming the only person to serve on the commissions investigating both space shuttle tragedies.

After the Challenger disaster, shuttle flights were temporarily grounded. Sally moved to NASA headquarters in Washington as the first director of the space agency’s Office of Exploration, where she authored an influential report on America’s future in space, known as the Ride Report. She retired from NASA in 1987.

Sally’s personal life was also undergoing changes. She had married fellow astronaut Steve Hawley in 1982, but they later divorced. Sally began a relationship with Tam O’Shaughnessy, a longtime friend who was teaching college biology in Atlanta. The two had met when they were preteens playing on the junior tennis circuit in Southern California.

After leaving NASA, Sally spent two years as a fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation working to verify the nuclear warhead arsenal of the Soviet Union. Then in 1989, she accepted a position as professor of physics at UC San Diego. She also served as director of the University of California’s California Space Institute. Tam joined Sally in La Jolla, and the two lived there as partners until Sally’s death in 2012.

Sally and Tam began working together to write science books for young people. Their six books included “The Third Planet: Exploring the Earth from Space,” which won the American Institute of Physics’ Children’s Science Writing Award in 1995.

Sally and Tam shared a concern about the lack of women in science and engineering careers. To narrow the gender gap, they came up with the idea of starting an education company.

In 2001 they got together with three colleagues with different areas of expertise to found Sally Ride Science. Joining Sally and Tam, who has a doctorate in school psychology, were Karen Flammer, a UC San Diego physicist; Terry McEntee, Sally’s longtime executive assistant; and Alann Lopes, a tech expert. Sally served as CEO, pitching investors and taking a hands-on role in all aspects of the company.