< 40 years ago, Sally Ride became the first American woman in space

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

It's a cool summer morning at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. Hundreds of thousands of spectators await the space shuttle launch on June 18, 1983, 40 years ago Sunday. People in the crowd are wearing T-shirts inscribed with the "Mustang Sally" lyrics, ride, Sally, ride, because one of the astronauts on board, Sally Ride, is about to make history. Here's NPR's Ashley Montgomery.

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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: T-minus 10, nine, eight...

ASHLEY MONTGOMERY, BYLINE: This is the first space flight to include an American woman. She's mission specialist Sally Ride.

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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: And liftoff of STS-7 and America's first woman astronaut.

MONTGOMERY: Ride and four other NASA crew members lift off on a six-day mission where they'll orbit Earth and deploy satellites. At 32 years old, Ride is the youngest astronaut on board.

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SALLY RIDE: I got a readout on Delta P3 and Delta P4, if you're interested in them.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Sure, we'd like to hear those, Sally.

MONTGOMERY: But she's not the first woman to go to space. That happened two decades earlier with the 26-year-old Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova. In the U.S., it wasn't until the 1970s when NASA started recruiting women for the space shuttle program.

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NICHELLE NICHOLS: I'm speaking to the whole family of humankind, minorities and women alike.

MONTGOMERY: In 1977, NASA released this video starring actress Nichelle Nichols, who played Lieutenant Uhura on "Star Trek."

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NICHOLS: If you qualify and would like to be an astronaut, now is the time.

MONTGOMERY: Ride was finishing her Ph.D. in physics when she saw an ad from NASA on page three of the Stanford student newspaper. Here's Ride speaking at UC Berkeley in 2011.

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RIDE: And the moment I saw that ad, I knew that that's what I wanted to do. I ripped it out of the newspaper, and I literally applied that afternoon.

MONTGOMERY: She was accepted into NASA's astronaut corps in 1978. She helped develop the shuttle's robot arm and worked in mission control. And in 1982, NASA announced that Ride would be the first American woman to go to space. Speaking with journalist Gloria Steinem after that historic mission, Ride said the press asked more about her gender than the mission.

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RIDE: The things that they were concerned with were not the same things that I was concerned with.

GLORIA STEINEM: For instance, the bathroom facilities.

RIDE: Bathroom facilities.

STEINEM: How much did you get asked that?

RIDE: Just about every interview, I got asked that. Everybody wanted to know about what kind of makeup I was taking up. They didn't care about how well-prepared I was to operate the arm or deploy communications satellites.

MONTGOMERY: Ride went up to space again a year later, this time on board the shuttle with another female astronaut, Kathryn Sullivan. It was another historic mission. It was the first time two women were in space together. Sally Ride was supposed to return to space a third time, but her mission was canceled after the Challenger explosion in 1986. She spoke with NPR's Morning Edition later that year.

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RIDE: I think it's very important that we try and rebuild the NASA - I don't want to say image because that sounds a little bit superficial but really get back to basics at NASA and get back to what people expect us to be.

MONTGOMERY: Ride left NASA in 1987. She became a physics professor at UC San Diego and wrote books about space for students and teachers. She continued to encourage children, especially young girls, in science and mathematics until her death in 2012. She was 61. Here's Tam O'Shaughnessy, Sally Ride's life partner of 27 years, talking to NPR's Short Wave.

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TAM O'SHAUGHNESSY: I almost have a picture of Sally in my mind. Her hair is kind of combed but kind of wild. A pair of shorts and barefoot - she loved going barefoot. I loved looking at her when she was, you know, like that, when she wasn't intense and working hard or - I loved that she could be there with me in each moment.

MONTGOMERY: Forty years ago this week, Sally Ride became the first American woman in space. Ashley Montgomery, NPR News.

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