First US woman in space;
Born: May 26, 1951; Died: July 23, 2012.
Sally Ride, who has died aged 61 of pancreatic cancer, blazed a trail as the first American woman in space.
She was an astronaut on the space shuttle Challenger in 1983 when she was 32. After her flight, more than 42 other American women flew in space.
When shuttles started flying frequently with crews of six or seven, astronauts became plentiful and anonymous.
When she first launched into space leading feminists such as Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda were at Kennedy Space Centre and many wore T-shirts alluding to the pop song with the refrain of the same name: "Ride, Sally Ride."
She was a physicist, writer of five science books for children and president of her own company. She had also been a professor of physics at the University of California in San Diego.
She was selected as an astronaut candidate in 1978, beating five women to be the first American female in space. Her first flight came two decades after the Soviets sent a woman into space.
She flew in space twice, both times on Challenger in 1983 and in 1984, logging 343 hours in space. A third flight was cancelled when Challenger exploded in 1986, claiming the lives of six colleagues and a schoolteacher. She was on the commission investigating that accident and later served on the panel for the 2003 Columbia shuttle accident, the only person on both boards.
She was also on the President's committee of science advisers. The 20th anniversary of her first flight also coincided with the loss of Columbia.
Born in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley, she became fascinated with science early on, playing with a chemistry kit and a telescope. She also excelled in tennis and competed in national junior tournaments.
She earned degrees in physics and English from Stanford University in 1973 and a masters in 1975. She was studying for a PhD when she saw an advert in the student newspaper calling for scientists and engineers to apply to become astronauts. She was chosen in 1978, the same year she earned her doctorate in physics from Stanford.
She married astronaut Steve Hawley in 1982 but the couple divorced in 1987. She was never fully comfortable being in the spotlight and on her website she publicly outed herself as gay, naming her partner of 27 years as childhood friend Tam O'Shaughnessy.
One of her last legacies was allowing middle-school students in the US to take their own pictures of the moon using cameras aboard Nasa's twin Grail spacecraft in a project spearheaded by her company.
She is survived by Ms O'Shaughnessy; her mother, Joyce; her sister, Bear, a niece and a nephew.
