Sally Kristen Ride

My hero was known for being the first woman in space. She went into space in 1983 and was the first. Sally was born on May 26, 1951 in Encino, California. She is still alive to this day.

At age 10, Sally Ride became an excellent tennis player. She then got a tennis scholarship to Westlake School in Los Angeles. She finally graduated in 1968 then she went to Swarthmore College. Soon after that she drooped out for her career in professional tennis. In 3 months of hard practice she decided she wasn’t good enough to be a pro. Then she quit tennis and enrolled at Stanford University.

At the age of 27 she had many degrees in Ph.D candidate for postdoctoral work in astrophysics. When she heard about NASA’s call for astronauts of Stanford university, there were 8,000 men and women who applied for that. Only 35 were accepted, only 6 were women and one was Sally.

Sally joined NASA in 1977 and started training for parachute jumping, water survival, gravity, and many more. Flying became her hobby. In 1983 she was the first woman to go into space on the challenger ST-7. Her next was an 8 day trip in 1984 on the same shuttle. Finally she retired in 1987.

She is my hero because she tries her hardest. She is really kind too and starts something and ends it and knows when to stop. She knows where to go in life.