Today marks the 26th anniversary of the first female astronaut to enter space. Sally Kristen Ride (born May 26, 1951) is an American physicist and a former NASA astronaut who, in 1983, became the first American woman and youngest American (at the time) to enter space.

Sally was aboard the space shuttle Challenger in 1983 and again in 1984. (The very first woman in space was the cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, who flew aboard Vostok 6 in 1963.) Ride earned a Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University in 1978 and joined NASA’s astronaut training program the next year. After the Challenger exploded during a 1986 launch, Ride served on the presidential commission investigating the accident. She retired from the astronaut corps in 1987.

R&B singer Wilson Pickett’s hit tune “Mustang Sally” includes the chorus, “All you want to do is ride around Sally / ride Sally ride.” The connection is coincidental; Pickett recorded the tune in the 1966, after Ride was born but long before she became famous.

From her earliest years in school, Ride was so proficient and efficient at once, she proved to be an outright annoyance to some of her teachers. Though she was a straight-A student, she was easily bored, and her brilliance only came to the fore in high school, when she was introduced to the world of science by her physiology teacher. The impact of this mentor, Dr. Elizabeth Mommaerts, was so profound that Ride would later dedicate her first book primarily to her, as well as the fallen crew of the Challenger.

Video of the Challenger Disaster

Source: Wikipedia – TechJaws