Ride Credit - www.spacefacts.de

Personal: Female, Divorced. Born in Los Angeles, California, USA. PhD

Astronaut Career

Astronaut Group: NASA Group 8 - 1978. Inactive Entered space service: 16 January 1978. Left space service: 15 August 1987. Number of Flights: 2.00. Total Time: 14.32 days.

Ride was the most strident feminist among the first group of American astronauts to include women. She refused to be seen in television downlinks doing food preparation or toilet cleaning, even though these were shared crew responsibilities. She refused to accept a bouquet of flowers from NASA after completing her first space mission. She pasted a bumper sticker to the front of her desk: "A woman's place is in the cockpit". Ride was a great tennis player who achieved national ranking. She was unmarried at the time of her astronaut selection; but would later marry and divorce astronaut Steve Hawley. BIRTHDATE AND PLACE: Born May 26, 1951, in Encino, California. Daughter of Dale Burdell Ride, a political science professor at Santa Monica Community College, and Joyce Hoyce Ride, a counselor at a women's correctional institution. Attended West Lake School for Girls and she rated eighteenth nationally on the junior tennis circuit.

EDUCATION: Began college career at Swarthmore College. Received Bachelor of science in physics; bachelor of arts in English; master of science and doctorate of philosophy in physics from Stanford University.

EXPERIENCE: Ride was selected straight from graduate school for the first group of shuttle astronauts. She became the first American woman to fly in space on shuttle mission STS-7 in 1983 and flew again on STS 41-G. Ride was preparing for her third mission when the Challenger exploded in 1986. She was appointed to the Presidential Commission charged with investigating the accident. In 1986, she moved to NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., where she became Assistant to the NASA Administrator for Long-Range Planning. Ride created NASA's "Office of Exploration" and produced a report on the future of the space program, "Leadership and America's Future in Space". Ride retired from NASA in 1987 to become a Science Fellow at the Center for International Security and Arms Control at Stanford University. After two years, she was named Director of the California Space Institute and Professor of Physics at the University of California, San Diego.

STS-7 Mission Specialist (MS) Ride sleeps in airlock... Credit- NASA

PERSONAL: Ride married NASA astronaut Alan Hawley in July of 1982. They had no children and were divorced in 1987.

• 18 June 1983 Flight: STS-7. Flight Up: STS-7. Flight Back: STS-7. Flight Time: 6.10 days.

• 5 October 1984 Flight: STS-41-G. Flight Up: STS-41-G. Flight Back: STS-41-G. Flight Time: 8.22 days.

16 January 1978 - NASA Astronaut Training Group 8 selected.. The group was selected to provide pilot, engineer, and scientist astronauts for space shuttle flights. Recruit women and minorities to introduce diversity into the astronaut corps. Qualifications: Pilots: Bachelor's degree in engineering, biological science, physical science or mathematics. Advanced degree desirable. At least 1,000 flight-hours of pilot-in-command time. Flight test experience desirable. Excellent health. Vision minimum 20/50 uncorrected, correctable to 20/20 vision; maximum sitting blood pressure 140/90. Height between 163 and 193 cm.

Mission Specialists: Bachelor's degree in engineering, biological science, physical science or mathematics and minimum three years of related experience or an advanced degree. Vision minimum 20/150 uncorrected, correctable to 20/20. Maximum sitting blood pressure of 140/90. Height between 150 and 193 cm.. 8,079 applicants, of which half met the basic qualifications. 208 invited for physical tests and interviews. Of the 35 selected, six were women, three were male African-Americans, and one was a male Asian-American.