Although originally planned to conduct the first shuttle landing at Kennedy Space Center, inclement weather in Florida forced a diversion to Edwards Air Force Base in California. Ride used the Shuttle’s robotic arm to deploy the first Shuttle Pallet Satellite (SPAS-01) and retrieve it two days later, the first time the Shuttle was used to return a spacecraft to Earth. The SPAS-01 satellite took some amazing photographs of Challenger as the two spacecraft flew in formation. On that first mission, STS-7, Sally was a mission specialist and controlled the robotic arm.ĭuring the six-day mission, the most complex in the shuttle program to date, the crew launched two commercial communications satellites, Anik C3 for Canada’s Telesat and Palapa B2 for Indonesia. 16, 1978.Īfter completing astronaut training, the Astronaut Class of 1978 became eligible for ground and flight assignments. Ride served as Capsule Communicator (CAPCOM) for STS-2 and STS-3 (both with orbiter Columbia) in late 1981 and early 1982, and became an expert in the use of the Shuttle’s robotic arm. On April 30, 1982, NASA announced that Ride would be part of the STS-7 crew, a satellite deployment and retrieval mission on board the Space Shuttle Challenger. She passed all the required tests and was selected to be part of the 35-member NASA Astronaut Group 8 on Jan. She was one of six women, out of 8,000, chosen. Sally saw an ad in the school newspaper inviting women to join the astronaut program and applied. Sally was a student at Stanford University studying for her P.h.D in physics in 1977 when NASA began looking for women astronauts. Nearly 13-year old me got to see that what my grandmother had taught me was true. Until June 18, 1983, that had never happened before. It seems odd to think about it today, as men and women train to go into space all the time. She was smart enough and she was just as good as her male counterparts. I got to see Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, third overall, climb aboard the space shuttle Challenger and take to the skies. While I would learn in my college years that I was not smart enough to be an astronaut, that never matter to me. I liked to blow stuff up, fix things, play baseball, and conduct stupid experiments, such as, can I make the jump from the roof of the house to the tree – no, I could not. Just because I was a girl didn’t mean I couldn’t do the job a boy did. I never wanted to be an astronaut, but I looked up to one.Īs a young girl, my grandmother always taught me that I could do anything I wanted.
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