Sally Ride became the first American woman in space
On this day · 18 June 1983
Twenty years after the first woman flew at all, a 32-year-old physicist finally carried the United States into that club.
On June 18, 1983, the space shuttle Challenger lifted off on mission STS-7, and Sally K. Ride became the first American woman in space. A 32-year-old astrophysicist by training, she had been picked from NASA’s first astronaut class to include women, selected in 1978.
Ride was no passenger. As a mission specialist she operated the shuttle’s robotic arm, deploying and then retrieving a free-flying satellite, the first time the arm was used to release and recapture a payload in orbit. The six-day flight also launched two commercial communications satellites.
The press fixation was, by her own account, exhausting. Reporters asked whether spaceflight would damage her reproductive organs and whether she cried under stress. Ride deflected and flew.
The United States was nearly two decades behind: Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova had reached orbit in 1963.
Ride flew once more, then spent her later career coaxing girls toward science, which may be the longer-lasting orbit.
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