Sally ride

These female pioneers broke barriers to study the great unknown.

Cape Canaveral, FL- Astronaut Sally Ride gets a welcoming kiss from her husband Steve Hawley, also an astronaut, on Ride's arrival at Kennedy Space Center, along with the other six crew members of...

A young Sally Ride. RIDE, SALLY RIDE!

Sally Ride

The United States Postal Service is releasing a stamp in commemoration of Sally Ride, the first American woman in space and the first known LGBT astronaut.

41 years ago, she became the first American woman in space. Our photographer documents what was it like to be an astronaut—and queer—in the 1980s.

Sally Ride was a 27-year-old Ph.D. candidate, looking for postdoctoral work in astrophysics, when an item in the Stanford University newspaper caught her eye. NASA was looking for astronauts. She was one of only six women to be accepted, out of 8,000 applicants. She joined NASA in 1977, and underwent years of rigorous physical and scientific training. In 1983 she became the first American woman in space, flying a six-day mission on the Space Shuttle Challenger. Her second mission lasted…