Sally Ride

      Sally Ride was the oldest of 2 and born in Los Angeles California to elders in the Presbyterian Church. While she had long harbored an interest in science, she was also a nationally ranked tennis player. She attended and graduated from Portola Junior High School and attended Birmingham High School until she transferred to, and graduated from the private Westlake School for Girls.
       She then attended Swathmore College for 3 semesters, then went to Berkeley to take physics classes, then transferred to Stanford as a junior. She eventually graduated from Stanford with a Bachelor's in English and physics. She also went on to earn a master's and PhD at Stanford in 1975 and 1978 respectively.
        In 1978, she was selected to be one of 38 astronauts in NASA Group 8, which was the first to choose women. In 1979, she graduated and began to work as a mission specialist running the ground based capsule communicator for the second and third space shuttle flights. She also helped with the development of a robotic arm called Canadarm.
        On June 18, 1983, she became the first woman in space as part of the Challenger crew for STS-7. Her main job was to operate the robotic arm. In 1984, she again went to space in the Challenger and spent more than 343 hours in space.
         After the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster, she was named Head of the subcommittee of the Rogers Commission, which investigated the cause of the disaster.