On the morning of June 18, 1983, the space shuttle Challenger blasted off from Florida with five astronauts on board. One of them was a 32-year-old physicist named Sally Ride. As Challenger climbed into the sky, Sally became the first American woman ever to fly in space - and at that age, the youngest American astronaut ever sent into orbit.
Sally was almost a professional tennis player before she became a scientist. She read a flyer on her Stanford University bulletin board in 1977 saying NASA was looking for astronauts, and for the first time, the application was open to women too. Out of 8,000 applicants, NASA picked 35 - including six women. Sally was one of them. On Challenger, she helped operate the shuttle's huge robotic arm, used it to release a satellite, and ran science experiments. Reporters mostly asked her silly questions before the flight - "Do you cry when things go wrong?" - but Sally just smiled and reminded them she was there to do a job. She flew a second mission in 1984.
After the Challenger tragedy in 1986, she helped investigate what had gone wrong. Later she wrote children's books about space and founded Sally Ride Science, a company that runs science camps and writes lessons for kids - especially girls who might think space, computers, or engineering aren't for them. She died in 2012, and the next year President Barack Obama gave her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Her old astronaut suit now hangs in the Smithsonian. Above it is a small note Sally once wrote: "Reach for the stars."
