Badge, NASA JSC Temporary, Sally K. Ride

This NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) temporary ID badge belonged to Dr. Sally K. Ride. It was issued to her in October 1977 when she arrived there for a week of medical tests and interviews for the astronaut selection program. Ride, then a Ph.D. candidate in physics at Stanford University, had applied to the program in January along with nearly 8,000 other people. The invitation to JSC meant that she was a finalist for the program. Three months later, in January 1978, NASA announced that she and five other women and 29 men had been chosen to form the first class of astronauts for the space shuttle era. This historic astronaut class also was the first to include women, African Americans, and an American of Asian descent. Dr. Ride’s partner, Dr. Tam O’Shaughnessy, donated the badge to the Museum in 2013.Sally Ride became the first American woman in space when she flew on the STS-7 shuttle mission in 1983. Her second and last space mission was STS-41G in 1984. Viewed as a leader in the NASA community, she served on the Rogers Commission after the Challenger tragedy in 1986 as well as the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) in 2003. She also led the task force that produced a visionary strategic plan in 1987, titled “NASA Leadership and America’s Future in Space,” known popularly as the "Ride Report." After she left NASA in 1987, Dr. Ride taught first at Stanford and later at the University of California, San Diego, where she also served as director of the California Space Institute. Until her death in 2012, she was president and CEO of Sally Ride Science, a company she founded to promote science education.