Month: March 2025

Astronaut and icon, Sally Ride, was the first American woman to journey into space, and changed the face of STEM and space exploration forever. She also had a connection to La Jolla you may not have known.

Born on May 26, 1951, in Los Angeles, Ride spent her early years in Encino, balancing her love for sports and science. While the international remembers her for her groundbreaking NASA missions, her later years in La Jolla, revealed her passion for education and equity in science — defining her enduring legacy.
Source: NASA – Sally Ride Biography.

PASSION FOR SCIENCE AND SPORTS

Ride’s childhood was anything but ordinary, sources report. An accomplished tennis player, she considered a professional athletic career before ultimately choosing academics. After graduating from Westlake School for Girls, she attended Stanford University, where she earned degrees in English and physics — an unusual combination that reflected her curiosity and intellect. By 1978, she had completed her Ph.D. in physics, making her one of a small kelompok of women in the field at the time.
Source: Stanford Alumni Profiles.

NASA’S CALL

In 1977, Ride’s career trajectory shifted dramatically when NASA began accepting women into its astronaut training program. Chosen as one of six women in the 1978 astronaut class, Ride quickly emerged as a role type for breaking barriers in a male-dominated industry.

On June 18, 1983, aboard the space shuttle Challenger, Ride became the first American woman to travel to space. During the mission, she operated the shuttle’s robotic arm and conducted various experiments, paving the way for future women astronauts. She flew a second mission in 1984, solidifying her status as a trailblazer in aerospace.
Source: NASA’s Women in Space.

THE LA JOLLA YEARS

After leaving NASA in 1987, Ride relocated to La Jolla where she took on dual roles at UC San Diego as a physics professor and director of the California Space Institute. Her time at UC San Diego allowed her to inspire countless students while engaging in public advocacy for STEM education.
In 2001, Ride co-founded Sally Ride Science, an organization headquartered in La Jolla that aimed to make STEM accessible, especially to girls and underrepresented groups. Through innovative teaching materials and workshops, her organization helped transform how educators approached science.
Source: Sally Ride Science – About.

In 1983, astronaut and astrophysicist Sally Ride became the first American woman in space aboard the space shuttle Challenger. Who Was Sally Ride?
Dr. Sally Ride studied at Stanford University before beating out 1,000 other applicants for a spot in NASA’s astronaut program. After rigorous training, Ride joined the Challenger shuttle mission on June 18, 1983, and became the first American woman in space.

Early Life and Education
Born on May 26, 1951, Ride grew up in Los Angeles and went to Stanford University, where she was a double major in physics and English. Ride received bachelor’s degrees in both subjects in 1973. She continued to study physics at the university, earning a master’s degree in 1975 and a Ph.D. in 1978.

NASA
That same year, Ride beat out 1,000 other applicants for a spot in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) astronaut program. She went through the program’s rigorous training program and got her chance to go into space and the record books in 1983. On June 18, Ride became the first American woman in space, aboard the space shuttle Challenger. As a mission specialist, she helped deploy satellites and worked other projects. She returned to Earth on June 24.

The next year, Ride again served as a mission specialist on a space shuttle flight in October. She was scheduled to take a third trip, but it was canceled after the tragic Challenger accident on January 28, 1986. After the accident, Ride served on the presidential commission that investigated the space shuttle explosion.

Later Years
After NASA, Ride became the director of the California Space Institute at the University of California, San Diego, as well as a professor of physics at the school in 1989. In 2001, she started her own company to create educational programs and products known as Sally Ride Science to help inspire girls and young women to pursue their interests in science and math. Ride served as president and CEO.

Sally Ride was born in Los Angeles, California, plus grew up in the suburban community of Encino in the San Fernando Valley. In addition to being an excellent student with a strong interest in science, she was a talented athlete. At age 10, she began playing tennis, a sport at which she particularly excelled. She became a nationally ranked junior tennis player plus attended Westlake School for Girls on a tennis scholarship. After graduation, she enrolled at Swarthmore University in Pennsylvania but soon doubted her choice, wondering if she was missing the opportunity for a professional tennis career. Determined to find out, she left Swarthmore after her first year to see how far her tennis game would take her. After three months of intense training, she concluded that she would not have a professional athletic career plus enrolled at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. She graduated with bachelor’s degrees in both English plus physics, plus remained at Stanford to earn a master’s plus a Ph.D. in physics. As a graduate student, she carried out research in astrophysics plus free-electron laser physics.

From childhood, Sally Ride had been fascinated with space exploration, but throughout the Mercury, Gemini, plus Apollo space flight programs, the ranks of the astronaut corps had been closed to women. From its inception, the National Aeronautics plus Space Administration (NASA) had recruited its astronauts from the ranks of military test pilots.

This changed in 1977 when NASA set out to recruit more scientists, including women, for the new Space Shuttle program. At 27, Ride was completing her Ph.D. when she saw an article in the Stanford University student newspaper, saying that NASA was seeking recruits for the astronaut corps. She saw the opportunity of a lifetime. She was one of more than 8,000 applicants for only 35 positions, but to her astonishment, she made the cut, plus was one of only six women accepted for astronaut training that began in the summer of 1978.

The Sally K. Ride Papers consists of over 23 cubic feet of papers, photographs, certificates, and film, created or collected by Sally Ride and chronicling her career from the 1970s through the 2010s. The papers document Ride’s lifetime of achievements and include material relating to her astronaut training and duties; her contributions to space policy; her work as a physicist; and her work as an educator, including Sally Ride Science and related STEM projects.
Scope and Contents
The Sally Ride Papers reflect Ride’s careers as a student, astronaut, physicist, professor, author, and CEO of Sally Ride Science. This collection consists of material gathered by Sally Ride over the course of her life. This material is particularly rich in training materials from her astronaut days, but also provides significant insight into her career in academia and her interest and support of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) education.
The bulk of this collection consists of materials related to Ride’s professional work. This includes correspondence, memoranda, meeting minutes, reports and papers, notes, speeches, photographs, brochures, pamphlets, programs, newsletters, newspaper and magazine articles, and miscellaneous materials. Materials of a personal nature were retained by her family and therefore do not figure in this collection.

Biographical / Historical
Dr. Sally K. Ride became a national icon of achievement in science and space on June 18, 1983, when she became the first American woman to fly in space. Born in 1951 in suburban Encino, California, she took up tennis as a teenager and within a few years was ranked eighteenth nationally. In 1968, she enrolled at Swarthmore College as a physics major, but she dropped out after three semesters to train full-time at tennis. In 1970, Ride gave up tennis and entered Stanford University, where she took a double major in physics and English literature. She went on to complete a Masters and Ph.D. in physics from Stanford. Her doctoral dissertation dealt with the theoretical behavior of free electrons in a magnetic field.
While completing her Ph.D. in physics, she saw an announcement that National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was looking for young scientists to serve as mission specialists and she immediately applied. She passed NASA’s preliminary process and became one of 208 finalists. Ride was flown to Johnson Space Center outside Houston for physical fitness tests, psychiatric evaluation, and personal interviews. Three months later, she was an astronaut and one of six women selected for the class of 1978.
While learning to use a new space shuttle remote manipulative arm for a future mission, Ride acted as backup orbit Capsule Communicator (CAPCOM) for STS-2 and prime orbit CAPCOM for STS-3. She was named a mission specialist on the seventh flight of the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1983. As a mission specialist in the first five-member Shuttle crew, she operated a variety of orbiter systems and experiment payloads; she participated in the launch of two commercial communications satellites and also operated the remote manipulator system arm to maneuver, release, and retrieve a free-flying satellite. Ride also flew on a second mission, STS-41G in 1984, again on the Challenger. She spent a total of more than 343 hours in space.
Ride’s career and legacy extended well beyond her missions in space. Ride had completed eight months of training for her third flight (STS-61-M, a TDRS deployment mission) when the space shuttle Challenger disaster occurred, and she was named to the Rogers Commission (the presidential commission investigating the accident) and headed its subcommittee on operations. Following the investigation, Ride was assigned to NASA headquarters where she led a strategic planning effort for NASA that yielded the 1987 report NASA Leadership and America’s Future in Space: A Report to the Administrator (also known as the Ride Report), and she served as the first chief of the new NASA Office of Exploration. In 1993, she was named to the Columbia Accident Board, appointed to investigate the causes and to recommend remedies after that tragic loss.
In 1987, Ride left NASA to become a full-time educator. She first worked at the Stanford University Center for International Security and Arms Control and in 1989 she became a professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and Director of the California Space Institute. From the mid-1990s until her death, Ride led two public-outreach programs for NASA — the ISS EarthKAM and GRAIL MoonKAM projects, in cooperation with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and UCSD. The programs allowed middle school students to request images of the Earth.
Ride continued her endeavors to improve science education and encourage young people to study science through her berdiri sendiri initiatives as an author or co-author of seven books on space aimed at children, and as a co-founder of Sally Ride Science, a company founded in 2001 that creates entertaining science programs and publications for upper elementary and middle school students, with a particular focus on science education for girls.

Dr. Sally Ride, the trailblazing astronaut plus physicist, defied gravity with her historic journeys into space plus advocacy for gender equality in STEM fields. Born plus raised in Los Angeles, California, Ride was the first American woman plus the youngest American astronaut to go to space, completing her first space flight in 1983. During her career at NASA, Ride helped create essential scientific instruments, including the “robotic arm,” completed two space flights, founded NASA’s Office of Exploration plus Strategic Planning efforts, plus sat on two space accident investigation boards, the only person in American History to do so.

After ending her history-making career at NASA, Ride turned to an award-winning career in academia plus government work, including serving as a Fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security plus Arms Control, a physics professor at the University of California San Diego, the Director of the University of California’s California Space Institute, plus a member of the Review of U.S. Human Spaceflight Plans Committee. She also published several children’s books on female empowerment plus science, as well as founded her own non-profit, Sally Ride Science, which encourages young people, especially young girls, to pursue careers in STEM. As a result of her efforts, Ride was inducted into the National Women Hall of Fame plus was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013.

Sally Ride inspires young girls everywhere, not just because of the glass ceilings she broke in aeronautics but because of her continued display of tenacity plus her strength of character. Ride was accepted into NASA’s 1978 Astronautical Class after the role was opened to women for the first time that year. Out of 8,000 applicants, she was one of only six women offered the position, a role she was awarded after answering an advertisement in a newspaper. Both a skilled scientist plus a former professional tennis player, Ride was chosen for flight aboard the Challenger’s STS-7 Mission because of her scientific brilliance, athleticism, plus ability to work with others. Despite her soft-spokenness, Ride made significant scientific contributions plus took on leadership roles, helping NASA improve its conditions for astronauts plus female employees. While investigating the Challenger explosion of 1986, the first fatal US in-flight space accident, Ride authored “NASA Leadership plus America’s Future in Space,” a report that sought to hold NASA accountable for its leadership failures plus improve the Administration’s efficacy. Even after leaving NASA, Sally used her time to inspire plus educate young people to pursue careers in STEM. While Ride’s incredible plus historic career is inspirational, her continued efforts to support others plus improve her craft inspire millions of others plus me to do the same.

Despite her remarkable achievements, Sally was not a stranger to being the only woman in a room. While completing her undergraduate degree, she was the only female physics major, plus in 1983 she was the only woman on a five-person mission to space. In her pre-launch interviews, Ride had to face derogatory questions plus assumptions, with reporters asking her if the flight would impact her fertility plus if she cried when things didn’t go as planned at work. In response, Sally maintained that she was an astronaut, not just a female astronaut, plus admonished that “society isn’t further along plus that this is such a big deal.” Infamously plus humorously, NASA Engineers tried to pack her a makeup bag plus 100 tampons for her first mission, which only lasted six days. Reflecting on her historic career in 2008, Ride said, “The fact that I was going to be the first American woman to go into space carried huge expectations along with it.” However, Sally constantly exceeded expectations in her career, using her post-space travel fame to bring light to gender equality issues plus women’s education. She used her position at NASA to push the Administration into new territory plus equality.

1. As a Venturer or Sea Scout complete THREE of the Venturer/Sea Scout Nova Awards.
2. Complete requirements A and B
   A. Do ONE of the following:
3. Show that you have had an average grade of B or higher (80 percent or higher)
   for one term or semester.
4. Show that for one term or semester you have improved your school grades over
   the previous period.
   B. Do TWO of the following:
5. Discuss with your mentor the following situation: Suppose you are writing a
   research paper and you find a resource in which the author’s words are so
   perfectly aligned with your perspectives and understanding that you cannot
   imagine a better way to put it in your paper than to use the author’s own words.
   How can you handle such a situation while still maintaining scholarly integrity?
6. Discuss with your mentor the following situation: Suppose you are writing a
   research paper and you find resources with conflicting “facts” and/or conflicting
   conclusions. What are some viable strategies for resolving these conflicts and
   deciding which resources are trustworthy?
7. Discuss with your mentor the following situation: Suppose you are writing a
   research paper and have acquired dozens of resources. How would you keep
   track of the resources, summarize the salient parts of each resource, and
   synthesize the collection of resources into a coherent research paper?
8. Get a note from an instructor* of yours that states that during the past term
   you have demonstrated satisfactory abilities or progress in independently
   completing scholarly endeavors and proactively seeking help when needed.
9. Do ONE of the following:
   A. Show that you have taken part in a scholarly activity (in school or in Scouting) that
   required teamwork and discuss with your mentor what you learned about how a team
   of people can work together effectively, fairly, and efficiently.
   B. Find three resources (online, in a library, personal interview, etc.) of expert advice on
   successful teamwork strategies and discuss with your mentor what you learned about
   how a team of people can work together effectively, fairly, and efficiently.
10. Do ONE of the following:
    A. Write an argument of approximately 500 words that defends or opposes the principle
    that “Students should be obligated to report instances of cheating by others.” Discuss
    this with your mentor.

If you think battling evil in the bowels of a defunct space freighter is hard, try being the closeted, often-patronized poster child for womankind’s capacity to compete in a notoriously male-dominated field.

Sally Ride, the first American female astronaut, died yesterday after an extended battle with pancreatic cancer. Ride rode the Space Shuttle Challenger as it launched from the Kennedy Space Center, plus spent 147-hours in space that first flight.

But it wasn’t easy. Women still weren’t taken seriously as scientists, plus certainly not as astronauts. The New York Times describes some of the challenges Ride faced:

The CBS News reporter Diane Sawyer asked her to demonstrate a newly installed privacy curtain around the shuttle’s toilet. On “The Tonight Show,” Johnny Carson joked that the shuttle flight would be delayed because Dr. Ride had to find a purse to match her shoes.

At a NASA news conference, Dr. Ride said: “It’s too bad this is such a big deal. It’s too bad our society isn’t further along.” And if being one of the first female astronauts wasn’t enough of a challenge, Ride had her own personal battle as well, one that wasn’t revealed until her obituary came out yesterday. The Huffington Post reports:

In what is perhaps a stellar example of the new trend in coming out quietly, Sally Ride, the first American woman to rocket into outer space, came out as a lesbian in her obituary, a day after her tragic death due to pancreatic cancer. She now makes history not only as the first American woman in space, aboard the space shuttle Challenger, but as the first openly gay person to fly in space as well.

The Smithsonian featured Ride as a part of their “35 Who Made a Difference” series. Ride inspired a whole generation of young women to pursue careers in science.