A TALENTED GIRL Sally Ride was born in Los Angeles California on May 26 1951 She grew up to be a bright and determined teenager who was gifted at math and science She was also a natural athlete and became an outstanding tennis player A LANDMARK FOR WOMEN When Sally was just 12 in 1963 the very first woman went into space She wasn’t American but Russian Her name was Valentina Tereshkova and she was a factory worker whose only experience of flying was with her local parachuting club Tereshkova was one of several women selected to train as cosmonauts the Russian name for astronauts After only 15 months of training she was chosen to be the first woman in space On June 16 1963 she took off aboard the spacecraft Vostok 6 After nearly three days and 48 orbits of Earth she parachuted safely back to land The Space Race After World War II ended in 1945 the United States and Russia competed in many areas including the exploration of space This struggle became known as the Space Race The Russians were first to
launch a satellite in 1957 and to launch a man into space in 1961 But the United States was the first to land people on the Moon in 1969 FIRST TO THE MOON Like many young people in the 1960s Ride was thrilled by the race into space Later she watched the live TV footage of the first Moon landing in 1969 But she had no dreams of going into space herself because astronauts were mostly men I just assumed there would never be a place for women she said Valentina Tereshkova was 26 years old when she became the first woman in space
THE UNITED STATES FALLS BEHIND The Russians had chosen a female cosmonaut but things were very different in the United States At the time women couldn’t be selected to become astronauts All sorts of reasons were given including that women weren’t strong enough for space travel or they might upset male astronauts Instead Ride worked hard at her education In 1970 she went to Stanford University in California where besides her tennis triumphs she gained degrees in English and physics Her main subject was astronomy the study of objects in space She enjoyed college life and decided to apply for a teaching job after she graduated A CAREER IN SPACE Then in January 1977 Ride saw a headline in the local Stanford newspaper NASA to Recruit Women NASA the U S National Aeronautics and Space Administration was openly advertising for female candidates For the first time women would be accepted for astronaut training She immediately wrote to apply There was a long wait More than 8,000 others had applied too and they all had to go through a series of tests and interviews At last a year later Ride was told she’d made it Mercury 13 Mercury 13 is the name given to 13 American women who trained to become astronauts in the United States in the early 1960s At the time the United States was planning to put its first astronaut into space The women underwent grueling tests to become part of the space team known
as the First Lady Astronaut Trainees FLAT Despite the fact that the women performed exceptionally well the FLAT project was not led by NASA and it was abandoned The 13 women never made it into space However their determination and dedication paved the way for future female astronauts Passing the test These are some of the tests Sally Ride had to take before being selected for NASA running on a treadmill to check that her heart was in good condition being zipped into a pitch-black chamber to see how she reacted to the dark interviewing with psychiatrists who assessed her personality writing an essay on why she wanted to go into space
