On June 18, 1983, Sally Ride made history when she became the first American woman in space. On Tuesday, Google honored what would have been her 64th birthday with an animated Google Doodle.
Ride was born in Los Angeles on May 26, 1951. While finishing her Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University in 1977, she applied to join NASA and was among one of six women selected to be astronaut candidates.
At the age of 32, Ride became the first American woman in space while on board the Challenger space shuttle. She made another mission into orbit the following year, also on board Challenger.
Ride’s partner Tam O’Shaughnessy wrote in a blog post that while in space Ride “realized how important it is for all of us to take care of our fragile home in space, and became an environmentalist.”
After leaving NASA, Ride became the director of the California Space Institute and professor of physics at the University of California at San Diego. She saw how girls were being put off from pursuing careers in science and math and worked to inspire young people, especially girls and minority students, to keep up their interests in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) subjects.
According to O’Shaughnessy Ride said, “Everywhere I go I meet girls and boys who want to be astronauts and explore space, or they love the ocean and want to be oceanographers, or they love animals and want to be zoologists, or they love designing things and want to be engineers. I want to see those same stars in their eyes in 10 years and know they are on their way!”
Photos: The Space Sorority
NASA Astronaut Sally K. Ride, STS-7 mission specialist, communicates with ground controllers from the flight deck of the Earth-orbiting Space Shuttle Challenger, on June 21, 1983. Ride was America's first woman in space.NASA/DPA/CorbisNASA astronaut Linda Godwin on STS-131, in 2010. Godwin traveled in four spaceflights, logging over 38 days in space, as well as over 10 EVA hours during two spacewalks.NASASandy Magnus - NASA astronaut and stealth craft engineer - flies in a T-38 trainer on her way from Houston to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida June 20, 2011.Smiley N. Pool—APJapanese astronaut Chiaki Mukai and John Glenn at a press conference, on Oct. 8, 1998. Mukai was Japan's first woman in space.Brooks Kraft—Sygma/CorbisAstronaut Marsha Ivins, mission specialist aboard space shuttle Columbia, surrounded by cameras and supportive gear suspended by zero-gravity, on Jan. 1, 1990. Ivins flew in space five times.Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesThe greatest number of women in space at any one time was four, in 2010. From lower right: NASA astronauts Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger, Stephanie Wilson, Tracy Caldwell Dyson, and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Naoko Yamazaki on the International Space Station in the Cupola.NASANASA astronaut Heidemarie M. Stefanyshyn-Piper, STS-115 mission specialist, takes a self-portrait during a space walk, on Sept. 12, 2006.NASA/Getty ImagesNASA Astronaut Susan J. Helms, flight engineer, views the topography of a point on Earth from the nadir window in the U.S. Laboratory / Destiny module of the International Space Station (ISS), on March 31, 2001. Helms is now a three-star lieutenant general in the United States Air Force.NASAFrench astronaut Claudie Haigneré trains with a cosmonaut at the City of the Stars, Russia's space exploration facility near Moscow, in 1996. Haigneré was France's first woman in space.Robert van der Hilst—CorbisNASA astronaut Kalpana Chawla looks over a procedures checklist in the SPACEHAB Research Double Module aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia, on Jan. 27, 2003. Chawla was the first Indian-American astronaut and the first Indian woman to go to space. In 2003, Chawla was one of the seven crew members who perished in the Columbia disaster.NASA/ReutersNASA Astronaut Nancy Currie reads a manual as she grapples an arriving space station module, in the cargo bay of the Endeavour, on Dec. 6, 1998.NASA/APFrom left: NASA astronaut Mike Massimino looks through an aft flight deck window with astronaut Megan McArthur inside the Space Shuttle Atlantis, on May 17, 2009 during the mission's fourth spacewalk to refurbish and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope.NASA/APSouth Korea's first woman in space, astronaut Yi So-yeon is helped by Russian specialists as she undergoes a splashdown landing training session in the Ukrainian Black Sea city of Sevastopol, on July 24, 2007.ReutersNASA astronaut Shannon Walker lands near the town of Arkalyk in northern Kazakhstan, on Nov. 26, 2010.Shamil Zhumatov—ReutersAstronaut Kathryn Sullivan at the Johnson Space Center, in Houston, on
July 20, 1984. On Oct. 13, 1984, Sullivan was the first U.S. woman to
walk in space. She was appointed as the Under Secretary
of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and NOAA Administrator on March 6,
2014.NASA/APChinese astronaut Liu Yang waves as she attends a drill in Jiuquan, northwest China's Gansu Province, on July 27, 2012. On June 16, 2012, Yang became China's first woman in space.Wang Jianmin—Xinhua/CorbisCanada's first female astronaut—and a neurologist as well—Roberta Bondar flew aboard the space shuttle in 1992 NASAAstronaut Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman sent into space, in Moscow, on June 16, 1963.Bettmann/Corbis
In 2001, Ride along with O’Shaughnessy founded Sally Ride Science, a company that created programs and study guides to help make science interesting and fun for young people.
Ride continued her work with NASA by leading public-outreach programs for the agency’s GRAIL mission, which sent satellites to map the moon’s gravity.
She also served on the two investigations into the Challenger disaster in 1986 and the Columbia disaster in 2003.
Throughout her life, Ride won many awards including the NASA Space Flight Medal, the NCAA’s Theodore Roosevelt Award and was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. She was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013. “As the first American woman in space, Sally did not just break the stratospheric glass ceiling, she blasted through it,” said President Obama.
On July 23, 2012, Ride died from pancreatic cancer at the age of 61.
See Google Doodles Through the Years
Aug. 26, 2015 For the 70th anniversary of La Tomatina.GoogleMay 26, 2015 In celebration of the 64th birthday of
Sally Ride, the first American woman in space.GoogleMarch 31, 2015 Honoring the 126th anniversary of the public opening of the Eiffel Tower.GoogleMar. 20, 2015 To celebrate the start of spring and the vernal equinox, Google created a stop-motion animation of flowers in bloom.GoogleNov. 12, 2014 For the landing of the Philae lander, the first spacecraft on a moving comet, Google created a gyrating lander with passing stars.GoogleSept. 9, 2014 For Tolstoy's 186th birthday, the Google Doodle team created an appropriately long click-through doodle.GoogleMay 27, 2014 For the Rachel Louise Carson doodle, the team surrounded her with birds and sea creatures to celebrate her 107th birthday.GoogleMay 4 2014 For Audrey Hepburn's 85th birthday, the doodle team adapted an image from a 1956 black and white photograph taken by Yousuf Karsh.GoogleJune 9, 2011 The doodlers came up with the idea of a playable logo, then pegged it to guitar innovator Les Paul's 96th birthday. Turning on composer mode allows you to create songs that you can share online.GoogleMarch 24, 2011 The Harry Houdini doodle was created in the style of the old posters advertising the death-defying magician.GoogleNov. 25, 2010 Chef Ina Garten prepared this Thanksgiving feast, which Google photographed. If you clicked on a dish, her recipe appeared.GoogleMay 7, 2010 Google asked the San Francisco Ballet to pose and twirl to re-create Pyotr Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake.GoogleOct. 7, 2009 Scan the doodle that marks the first patent for the bar code and you'll decode Google embedded within.GoogleMarch 2, 2009 The doodlers arranged classic Dr. Seuss characters, like the Cat in the Hat and the Grinch, to form the logo's letters.GoogleJan. 28, 2009 There was no other way to honor abstract artist Jackson Pollack than with a chaotic drip painting.GoogleJan. 19, 2009 Guest artist Shepard Fairey (famed for his Obama HOPE poster) did a sketch for Martin Luther King Jr. Day.GoogleJan. 28, 2008 Early on, Google used Lego blocks as casing for hard disks. Later it feted Lego's 50th anniversary.GoogleApril 22, 2007 A melting iceberg for Earth Day is one of many eco-minded doodles the team has created.GoogleJan. 4, 2006 Enter the world of out-there doodles — Google in braille. Only problem: you can't feel it.GoogleMarch 30, 2005 The Van Gogh doodle appeared in an era when doodles began to get more ambitious, and it's one of the doodlers' best interpretations of a specific painter.GoogleAug. 13, 2003 Early doodles of famous folk tended to be simple, like this silhouette of Alfred Hitchcock.GoogleMarch 14, 2003 The early doodles were often simple but playful, like this mustachioed drawing of Albert Einstein to celebrate his birthday.GoogleNov. 14, 2001 Google's first doodler, Dennis Hwang, gave the logo an Impressionist look for Claude Monet's birthday.GoogleAug. 30, 1998 When employees left for the Burning Man festival, the Google logo became a cryptic BE BACK LATER sign. "There was no master plan for doodles at that point," says doodler-in-chief Ryan Germick.Google
