Sally Ride was the third woman in space and first American

Sally Ride became the first American woman in space on June 18, 1983, launching aboard the space shuttle Challenger on mission STS-7 at the age of 32. She was not the first woman in space, though: she was the third, after two Soviet cosmonauts.

The US came third because NASA did not select women as astronauts until 1978. Ride, a physicist who answered a newspaper notice, was one of 35 people chosen from about 8,000 applicants for that year’s class, which included six women. By then the Soviet Union had flown Valentina Tereshkova in 1963, and in summer 1982 it sent Svetlana Savitskaya to the Salyut 7 station, a move that, as NASA’s historians put it, made sure the first two women in space were Soviet citizens.

Ride was on board for her skills. Before flying she served as capcom for two earlier shuttle missions and helped develop the shuttle’s robotic arm; on STS-7 she used it to release the SPAS-01 research satellite and retrieve it two days later. Her commander, Bob Crippen, explained the choice:

“I wanted a competent engineer who was cool under stress. Sally had demonstrated that talent.”

Reporters were less focused; one asked whether she wept when things went wrong on the job.

She flew again on STS-41G in October 1984, then became the only person to serve on the presidential commissions that investigated both the Challenger (1986) and Columbia (2003) disasters. In 2001 she co-founded Sally Ride Science to steer children toward science and engineering. She died of pancreatic cancer in 2012. Honoring her wish to avoid labels, her partner of 27 years, Tam O’Shaughnessy, made their relationship public only after her death.