Selection and training In January 1977, Ride spotted an article on the front page of
The Stanford Daily that told how the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was recruiting a new group of
astronauts for the
Space Shuttle program and wanted to recruit women. No women had previously been NASA astronauts, although the
Soviet Union's
cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova had flown in space in 1963. Ride mailed a request for, and received the application forms. When asked for three persons with knowledge of her qualifications, she gave the names of three of her peers from college with whom she had been in relationships: Colson, Tompkins and Tyson. She was the only woman among the twenty applicants in the sixth group, all applicants for
mission specialist positions, who reported to NASA's
Johnson Space Center (JSC) in
Houston, Texas, on October 3, for a week of interviews and medical examinations. Her physical fitness impressed the doctors. They placed her in a
Personal Rescue Enclosure, a ball 36 inches (91 cm) in diameter, to see if she suffered from
claustrophobia. She was asked to write a one-page essay on why she wanted to become an astronaut. Finally, she was interviewed by the selection committee. Officially, they were
astronaut candidates; they would not become fully-fledged astronauts until they had completed their training. Ride was graded a
civil service GS-12, with a salary of US$21,883 (). She bought a
housing unit in the
Nassau Bay, Texas, area, and moved in with Colson, who secured a research grant at
Rice University so they could move to Houston together. He became the only unmarried astronaut candidate's partner. In 1981, Ride began dating
Steven Hawley, another one of the TFNGs. They moved in together, and considered themselves engaged. Unlike Colson, he was not aware of her earlier relationship with Tyson. She was the first woman to serve as a CapCom. By early 1982, George Abbey and the
Chief of the Astronaut Office,
John Young, wanted to begin scheduling missions with the TFNGs, starting with the
seventh Space Shuttle mission. To command it, they chose
Robert Crippen, who had flown with Young on the
first Space Shuttle mission. They wanted a woman to fly on the mission, and since the mission involved the use of the RMS, the choice narrowed to Ride,
Judy Resnik and Anna Fisher, who had specialized on it. Factors in Ride's favor included her agreeable personality and ability to work with others, her performance as CapCom, and her skill with the robot arm. However, JSC director
Chris Kraft preferred Fisher, and Abbey had to defend their decision. NASA Headquarters ultimately approved Ride's selection, which was officially announced in April 1982. As the first American woman to fly in space, Ride was subjected to media attention. There were over five hundred requests for private interviews, all of which were declined. Instead, NASA hosted the usual pre-launch press conference on May 24, 1983. mission. Left from her head float three
Hewlett-Packard HP-41 series pocket calculators
customized by NASA, which were used for various tasks on board.|alt=refer to caption When the lifted off from the
Kennedy Space Center (KSC) on June 18, 1983, Ride became the first American woman to fly in space, and the third woman overall. Many of the people attending the launch wore T-shirts bearing the words "Ride, Sally Ride", lyrics from
Wilson Pickett's song "
Mustang Sally". The mission also carried the first
Shuttle pallet satellite (SPAS-1), which carried ten experiments to study formation of metal
alloys in
microgravity. Part of Ride's job was to operate the robot arm to deploy and later retrieve SPAS-1, which was brought back to Earth. The orbiter's small
Reaction control system rockets were fired while SPAS-1 was held by the remote manipulator system to test the movement on an extended arm. The mission also studied
Space adaptation syndrome, a bout of
nausea frequently experienced by astronauts during the early phase of a space flight.
Planned third mission Ride was soon back in the rotation, training for her third flight, STS-61-I. This mission was scheduled to be flown no later than July 15, 1986, and was to deploy the
Intelsat VI-1 and
INSAT 1-C communications satellites and carry the Materials Science Lab-4. The crew was subsequently switched to
STS-61-M, a
Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRS) deployment mission scheduled to be flown in July 1986. She also served on two more missions as CapCom. On January 7, 1986, Ride provided a glowing reference for her friend, and eventual biographer,
Lynn Sherr for NASA's
Journalist in Space Project. Sherr became one of the finalists. This could be agonizing for a couple whose marriage was breaking up. According to
Roger Boisjoly, who was one of the engineers who warned of the technical problems that led to the
Challenger disaster, leading to the entire workforce of O-ring supplier
Morton-Thiokol shunning him, Ride was the only public figure to show support for him when he went public with his pre-disaster warnings. Ride hugged him publicly to show her support for his efforts. The Rogers Commission submitted its report on June 6, 1986. Following the
Challenger investigation, Ride was assigned to NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., where she led NASA's first
strategic planning effort. She authored a report titled "
NASA Leadership and America's Future in Space". NASA management was unhappy with its prioritization of Earth exploration over a mission to Mars. She founded NASA's Office of Exploration, which she headed for two months. On weekends she flew to Atlanta to be with O'Shaughnessy. In October 1986, she published a children's book,
To Space and Back, which she co-wrote with Sue Okie, her high school and Swarthmore friend. == After NASA ==