Many people may know who Sally Ride is from her recent commercial appearance, however Sally Ride has quite a list of Accomplishments. Sally Ride is most commonly well known as the first American woman in space. Sally went to Stanford University where she earned a Bachelor of Science in physics and a Bachelor of Arts in English and if thats not enough she continued with her education to get a Masters and a doctorate degree in physics from Stanford in 1975 and 1978. In 1978 Sally was selected for astronaut training in 1978 and as part of her training she was a member of the support crew for the second and third space shuttle flights and worked in mission control as a capsule communicatory for the missions.

Sallys first flight in space was aboard the space shuttle Challenger in 1983. During that mission Sally and the other four members of the crew deployed communications satellites for Canada and Indonesia. The mission also involved the first satellite deployment and retrieval with the shuttles robot arm. The mission was in orbit for 6 days then it returned back to Earth. Sallys second space flight was also aboard Challenger, the thirteenth space shuttle flight, in October 1984. During the 8-day mission the crew deployed the Earth Radiation Budget satellite, which conducts scientific observations of the Earth and helped to demonstrate the potential for satellite refueling by astronauts. In June of 1985 Sally was assigned to a third space shuttle flight, however due to the Challenger accident training was stopped. For the next six moths Sally was a member of the Presidential Commission investigating the accident and upon completion of the investigation Sally was assigned to NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C. as assistant to the NASA Administrator for long-range planning. In this role she created NASA's Office of Exploration and produced a report on the future of the space program entitled "Leadership and America's Future in Space."

Some other unknown facts about Sally are that she wrote a childrens book, To Space and Back, describing her experiences in space as well as Voyager: An Adventure to the Edge of The Solar System and The Third Planet: Exploring The Earth From Space. Currently Sally is a physicist and a member of the faculty at the University of California San Diego, as a physics professor. She continues to work with children getting them involved with science, especially working with young girls to show them how cool science and space can be. To learn more about Sally go to www2.lucidcafe.com/lucidcafe/library/96may/ride.html and to learn more about her science club designed to inspire young girls go to sallyrideclub.com/SallyRide/PublicServlet

Unknown fact about Sally: Originally she thought she was going to be a professional tennis player and even won a scholarship to play tennis, however she decided to drop the tennis to enroll in Stanford.