On June 16, 1963, American astronaut Sally Ride became the first American woman to travel into space when she served as a mission specialist on the STS-7 space shuttle mission. Ride was born on May 26, 1951, in Encino, California. She earned a bachelor's degree in physics and English from Stanford University and a doctorate in physics from the University of California, Berkeley. Ride joined NASA in 1978 and was selected as an astronaut in 1979. She flew on two space shuttle missions, STS-7 and STS-41-G, before retiring from NASA in 1987. Ride died of pancreatic cancer on July 23, 2012, at the age of 61.
