Born in Encino, California May 26,1951, Sally Kirsten Ride graduated from Stanford with four degrees, including Bachelor's Degrees in English and Physics, a Master's in Physics and a Doctorate in Physics. As a post-graduate at Stanford in 1977, Ms. Ride read about the NASA call for new astronauts and became one of the 8,000 that applied, and was accepted in the group of 35, six of whom were women.

Among her duties at NASA after her rigorous training were serving as Communications Officer for the space Shuttle Columbia's second and third missions, relaying messages from ground control to the shuttle crew. Sally Ride became the first American woman in space in 1983, serving on the shuttle Challenger in the seventh shuttle mission. She completed another eight-day mission on the Challenger in 1984, and became an expert on the use of the Remote Manipulation Arm that deploys satellites and other objects into space. She was preparing for a third mission in 1986 when the Challenger exploded.

Ride was appointed to the Presidential Commission investigating the explosion, and later moved to Washington DC to become assistant to the NASA administrator for long-range planning. She created the NASA Office of Exploration, and was responsible for a report on the future of the space program unofficially known as the "Ride Report," although its formal title was "Leadership and America's Future in Space."

Retiring from NASA in 1987, Ride became a Science Fellow at Stanford University at the Center for International Security and Arms Control. In 1989 she became director of the California Space Institute and a Professor of Physics at the University of California, San Diego.