- Born
- 26 May 1951Los Angeles, USA
- Died
- 23 July 2012La Jolla, California, USA · aged 61
Sally Ride
The first American woman in space kept her 27-year relationship with a woman private – it was revealed only in her obituary.
Sally Ride grew up in Los Angeles and was a talented tennis player. She studied physics and English at Stanford and earned her doctorate in astrophysics. In 1978 she answered a newspaper advertisement in which NASA was looking for astronauts – for the first time including women.
On 18 June 1983 she flew into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, becoming the first American woman in space and, at 32, the youngest American astronaut. She operated the shuttle’s robotic arm. A year later she flew again. After the Challenger disaster in 1986 and the Columbia disaster in 2003, she served on both investigation commissions.
Later she taught physics and founded a company, Sally Ride Science, to encourage girls to study science and technology.
Ride was briefly married to a fellow astronaut. For 27 years she lived with Tam O’Shaughnessy, a former tennis player and science educator. She never spoke publicly about it; only her obituary in 2012, published by her family and foundation, named O’Shaughnessy as her partner. This made her the first known LGBTQ astronaut. She died of pancreatic cancer at 61.