
Lived: May 26, 1951 – Jul 23, 2012 (age 61)
Height: 5′ 5″ (1.65 m)
Partner: Tam O’Shaughnessy (1985 – 2012)
Spouse: Steven Hawley (m. 1982 – 1987)
Space agency: NASA
Education: Stanford University · Swarthmore College · Harvard-Westlake School · Gaspar De Portola Middle SchoolHighlights
- 1982: In 1982, she married fellow NASA astronaut Steve Hawley.
- 1983: On June 18, 1983, she became the first American woman in space as a crew member on space shuttle Challenger for STS-7.
- 1987: In 1987, Ride left her position in Washington, D.C., to work at the Stanford University Center for International Security and Arms Control.
- 1989: In 1989, she became a professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego, and director of the California Space Institute.
- 2012: After Sally Ride’s death in 2012, General Donald Kutyna revealed that she had discreetly provided him with key information about O-rings (namely, that they become stiff at low temperatures) that eventually led to identification of the cause of the explosion.
- 2012: Ride died on July 23, 2012, at the age of 61, in her home in La Jolla, California, seventeen months after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

Ride on Challenger’s mid-deck during STS-7 in 1983
wiki/Sally_Ride
(1951) Trailblazing astronaut Sally Ride is born.
Also on this day,
1647 | American “witch” hanged
1897 | “Dracula” published
1975 | Knievel’s UK jump