Sally Ride became the first American woman in space on June 18, 1983, at 7 a.m. Her stellar career as a physicist and astronaut has inspired millions of women.

Sally Ride was born in 1951 and enjoyed a free-spirited southern California childhood. She loved reading and playing sports, especially tennis. In high school, Ride seriously considered becoming a professional tennis player, but she turned down a tennis scholarship from a fancy high school to focus on her passion for science. After graduation, Ride headed for college to study astrophysics.

After a brief stint at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania and then playing tennis full-time, she enrolled at Stanford University. After getting her degree in physics, she kept on studying, working toward a doctorate degree.

It was while at Stanford that Ride and NASA first came together. Ride responded to the space agency's call for new mission specialists. She was one of 8,000 applicants, but Ride made the cut as one of the 35 individuals selected for the space-shuttle training program; six of the trainees were women. During training, Ride fell in love with flying; she took lessons and earned a private pilot's license. Ride also fell in love with — and married — fellow astronaut Steve Hawley.

Thanks to her exceptional know-how, Ride was chosen to fly on the seventh flight of the space shuttle Challenger. In 1983, at age 32, Sally Ride became the first American woman in space and the youngest astronaut ever.

After two successful journeys into space, Ride's enthusiasm for off-Earth travel was dampened when the Challenger exploded in 1986 just 73 seconds after liftoff, killing all seven crew members aboard. It was a bad time in the astronaut's personal life, too; her marriage was crumbling. However, when Ride was assigned to the commission in charge of investigating the Challenger accident, her faith in NASA was restored and she became head of a program that would look into the future of space exploration.

Ride retired from NASA in 1987 (the same year she got a divorce). In 1989, she was named director of the California Space Institute and became a physics professor at the University of California, San Diego. Sally Ride is a hero, an inspiration and role model to millions of women. She continues to be a spokesperson for the U.S. space program and is pursuing one of her biggest passions, encouraging young women to study science and math.