On This Day in Space! June 18, 1983: Sally Ride becomes America’s 1st woman in space, ,

On June 18, 1983, NASA astronaut Sally Ride became America’s first woman in space after she and four colleagues blasted off on the space shuttle Challenger for the STS-7 mission. The astronauts spent 6 days in space deployed two communications satellites for Indonesia and Canada.

Ride became the first woman to operate Canadarm, the shuttle’s robotic arm. She used it to deploy a Shuttle Pallet Satellite that was loaded with science experiments, and later used it again to bring the satellite back inside the shuttle.

They returned to Earth on June 24. Ride later became the first American woman to travel a second time when she launched on another Challenger mission, STS-41G, in 1984. Ride also served as president of Space.com from 1999 to 2000.

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