Back to Blog
Woman who lost nasa internship7/23/2023 "And so she decided to retire and kind of move on with her life."įollowing in Ride’s footsteps, Collins in 1995 became the first female pilot of NASA’s space shuttle program. "Sally realized she wouldn't fly again for years, and she just thought, I'm here to fly," O’Shaughnessy said. Ride served on the investigation board for the accident and then worked at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., to author guidance for NASA leadership on the future of spaceflight before retiring from the agency in 1987. The shuttle program was grounded for nearly three years. Soon after that second mission, NASA experienced the first great catastrophe of its space shuttle program when the Challenger exploded during ascent, killing the seven astronauts on board. She also quickly returned to training for her second spaceflight, which alleviated some of the pressure. Ride spoke with a psychologist and began cutting back on public appearances. "Those were feelings that were new to her." "It was really hard on Sally, and she started feeling unsettled," O’Shaughnessy said. After her first spaceflight, "she started giving speeches around the country and describing what it was like to be in space and share her experiences, and she loved doing that," O’Shaughnessy said. Ride had been a relaxed and happy individual, O’Shaughnessy said, but being in the spotlight eventually took its toll. ![]() Sally thought she could handle it, but she didn't really understand." "NASA leadership thought that she could handle it. "She was forewarned, by NASA leadership, that because she was the one chosen out of the six first female astronauts to be the first American woman to fly in space, it was going to be hard, and she would be in the spotlight," O’Shaughnessy said. And for me, she was somebody like that.”īIG MONEY MOVES: NASA awards multibillion-dollar lunar lander contract to Blue Origin for Artemis program The challenges of being a Challenger astronautįive years after joining NASA, Ride boarded Challenger in 1983 to make history. “It's important to have people who look like you succeeding. I could say, 'I look like her,'" Gunderson said. Gunderson said Ride had "changed the world and I wanted to change the world in the way that she had." In elementary school, dressed in a snowmobiling suit with glued-on NASA and American flag patches fashioned into a makeshift astronaut jumpsuit, Gunderson stood in front of her classmates and proclaimed that she wanted to be an astronaut just like Sally Ride. "She was breaking barriers and making it more possible for me," Collins said.Īnother woman who found lifelong inspiration in Ride is National Test Pilot School Flight Test Engineer Kate Gunderson. The six women accounted for just 17% of the 35 newly selected astronaut candidates.įuture astronaut Eileen Collins was a pilot in the Air Force at the time with her sights set on space. She followed Ride’s selection and the attention she received from the media. She was selected by NASA as part of the agency’s eighth astronaut class, the first to assign astronauts to fly aboard the space shuttle and the first to include female candidates. "She was eating breakfast one day in the student cafeteria, and she saw the Stanford Daily, the student newspaper, had an article about NASA recruiting women and women scientists for the very first time," O'Shaughnessy said. ![]() Until Ride was selected in 1978 alongside five other women, all of NASA’s astronaut candidates had been white men that were test pilots or scientists, often with military experience. “Many people think that she was like a type A personality, mapped out her whole life, and that couldn't be further from the truth,” O’Shaughnessy said. ![]() Pursuing a career as an astronaut never crossed her mind. And when she got interested in something, she really dove in and gave it her all," said Tam O’Shaughnessy, Ride’s longtime business and life partner. ![]() She thought she might end up as a physics professor after earning her Ph.D. In 1977, before becoming an astronaut, Ride was a doctoral student studying physics at Stanford University in California. While going to space is what thrust Ride into the spotlight, it was her advocacy for improving the safety of human spaceflight and her effort to make high-quality scientific education available to more young people that cemented her legacy. Now on the 40th anniversary of her first historic spaceflight and 11 years after her death from pancreatic cancer, NASA is preparing to launch the first mission to the moon with a woman onboard. Sally Ride shattered the glass ceiling on June 18, 1983, in dramatic fashion aboard NASA’s space shuttle Challenger to become the first American woman in space.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |