Mondo Knows Facts
Sally Ride became the first American woman in space in 1983
She flew on the shuttle Challenger with five crewmates Valentina Tereshkova had flown 20 years earlier for the Soviet Union. Ride was a physicist who had answered a newspaper advertisement for astronaut candidates. She later investigated the Challenger accident and taught physics. It sits in Mondo's space collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
Where this comes from
Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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Tags: astronauts, history, shuttle
Sally Ride became the first American woman in space in 1983: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- She flew on the shuttle Challenger with five crewmates. The figure is taken from NASA History, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a space fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Space shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.