SALLY KRISTEN RIDE

The First American Woman In Space 

(SALLY KRISTEN RIDE)

Sally Kristen Ride lived between May 26, 1951 – July 23, 2012 and was an American physicist and astronaut. she was born in Los Angeles, Ride joined NASA in 1978 and became the first American woman in space in 1983. Ride remains the youngest American astronaut to have travelled to space till date, having done so at the age of 32. After flying twice on the space shuttle Challenger, she left NASA in 1987. She worked for two years at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Arms Control, latter at the University of California, San Diego as a professor of physics, primarily researching non-linear optics and Thomson scattering. She served on the committees that investigated the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters, the only person to participate on both.