Death of Sally Ride, first American
to go into space

NEW YORK – Sally Ride, the first American woman to travel in space, died at the age of 61 after 17 months of fighting pancreatic cancer. Ride went to space in 1983, after joining NASA’s astronaut corps in 1978. She grew up in Los Angeles and took a degree in physics and English at Stanford University.

Sally Ride, along with the Soviet Valentina Tereskova who was the first woman ever to go into space in 1963, was one of the pioneers of the space race. In 1978 she participated, after being admitted to NASA, to the first course for astronauts which women were allowed to attend. In charge of communications in the second and third missions of the Space Shuttle program, on June 18, 1983 the STS-7 entered a crew in a mission of the Challenger. His second space flight took place in 1984, still on board the Challenger. Altogether he spent more than 343 hours in space. He should have left for the third trip, but the program was interrupted after the disaster of 1986, when the shuttle exploded in flight, with the death of all seven crew members.

(24 July 2012)