The elder child of Dale Burdell Ride and Carol Joyce (nee Anderson), Ride was born in Los Angeles. She had one sibling, Karen "Bear" Ride, who is a Presbyterian minister. Both parents were elders in the Presbyterian Church. Ride's mother had worked as a volunteer counselor at a women's correctional facility.
Ride was one of 8,000 people who answered an advertisement in the Stanford student newspaper seeking applicants for the space program. She was chosen to join NASA in 1978. During her career, Ride served as the ground-based capsule communicator (CapCom) for the second and third space shuttle flights (STS-2 and STS-3) and helped develop the space shuttle's "Canadarm" robot arm. Prior to her first space flight, she was subject to media attention due to her gender. During a press conference, she was asked questions such as, "Will the flight affect your reproductive organs?" and "Do you weep when things go wrong on the job?" Despite this and the historical significance of the mission, Ride insisted that she saw herself in only one way--as an astronaut. On June 18, 1983, she became the first American woman in space as a crew member on space shuttle Challenger for STS-7. She was preceded by two Soviet women, Valentina Tereshkova in 1963 and Svetlana Savitskaya in 1982. The five-person crew of the STS-7 mission deployed two communications satellites and conducted pharmaceutical experiments. Ride was the first woman to use the robot arm in space and the first to use the arm to retrieve a satellite. Her second space flight was in 1984, also on board the Challenger. She spent a total of more than 343 hours in space. Ride had completed eight months of training for her third flight (STS-61-M, a TDRS deployment mission) when the space shuttle Challenger disaster occurred. She was named to the Rogers Commission (the presidential commission investigating the accident) and headed its subcommittee on operations. Following the investigation, Ride was assigned to NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., where she led NASA's first strategic planning effort, authored a report titled "NASA Leadership and America's Future in Space" and founded NASA's Office of Exploration. After Sally Ride's death in 2012, General Donald Kutyna revealed that she had discreetly provided him with key information about O-rings (namely, that they become stiff at low temperatures) that eventually led to identification of the cause of the explosion.

Q: How Did her NASA career start?
A: Ride was one of 8,000 people who answered an advertisement in the Stanford student newspaper seeking applicants for the space program.

Q: What year did she get picked?
A: She was chosen to join NASA in 1978.

Q: What did she do at NASA?
A: During her career, Ride served as the ground-based capsule communicator (CapCom) for the second and third space shuttle flights (STS-2 and STS-3)
Did she do anything else?
helped develop the space shuttle's "Canadarm" robot arm. and helped develop the space shuttle's "Canadarm" robot arm. and helped develop the space shuttle's "Canadarm" robot arm. helped develop the space shuttle's "Canadarm" robot arm. and helped develop the space shuttle's "Canadarm" robot arm.
and helped develop the space shuttle's "Canadarm" robot arm.