The numbers
- What she did
- Astronaut and physicist
- Who she flew for
- NASAIn the first class that included women
- A first
- First American woman in space
- Time in space
- 343hoursMore than that, in two flights
To get an idea
On her first flight she was thirty-two, younger than any American who had flown before her.
Her two flights added up to more than three hundred forty hours in space, about two weeks.
Fun facts
These are not in the book: there was no room on paper.
On her first flight she used the robotic arm to release a satellite and then grab it back.
She even bent the robotic arm into the shape of a 7, the number of her mission.
During her second flight, in 1984, two women were in space together for the very first time.
She served on the panels that investigated both the Challenger and the Columbia shuttle accidents.
In 2022 she was one of the first two women shown on a new series of American quarters.
Test yourself
The first question is the one printed under the QR code, with the answer the book did not give. The other four only exist here.
Question 1 of 5★ is the one from your book
What was Sally Ride the first to do?
Question 2 of 5
What did she study at university?
Question 3 of 5
What was her job on her first flight?
Question 4 of 5
How many times did she fly in space?
Question 5 of 5
What did she do after leaving NASA?
Riddles
I grew up hitting tennis balls in California, then I chose physics, and one day an ad in a newspaper changed my life. In 1983 I went where no American woman had gone. Who am I?
Up there my job was to move a giant mechanical arm: I let a satellite go and then caught it again, like playing catch far above the clouds. Who am I?
When I came back down I did not stop: I wrote books and started programs so that children, and girls most of all, would fall in love with science. Who am I?
Try it yourself
Tape a clothespin to the end of two rulers joined together and try to pick up a small ball without touching it: that is a robotic arm.
Write three things you are good at and three you would like to learn: that is more or less how every astronaut application begins.
The words
- robotic arm
- A long mechanical arm, moved from inside, that grabs and releases things in space.
- physicist
- A scientist who studies matter, energy, light and motion.
Sources: Wikidata (Q49285), Wikipedia (Sally Ride).