Sally Kristen Ride was born on May 26, 1951 in Encino, California and is now 51. She is famous for being the first American woman in outer space. She started playing tennis when she was 10. First she began her carreer as a professional tennis player. Later she quit playing tennis and enrolled at Stanford University.

She joined NASA in 1977, when she was 26 and became Dr. Sally Ride the next year. The training for NASA was tough and fun. Sally got to parachute, pratice water survival, gravity and weightlessness, radio communication, and navigation.

Dr. Ride soon found out that her new favorite hobby was flying. In 1983 she flew on the Challenger (STS-4) and Challenger (STS 41-G.) By that time she spent more than 343 hours in space.

In 1986 the Challenger exploded and Sally Ride moved to Washington. There she became the assistant of the NASA administrator.

The next year she retired from NASA. In 1989 Sally became the director of California Space Institute and the "Professer of Physics" at the University of California and she joined space.com in 1999 until September 2000.

 

Fun Facts:

•The Challenger (STS-4) and Challenger (STS 41-G) were the same spacecraft, just different flights.