June 18, 1983 – The First American Woman in Space

On this day in engineering history, Sally Ride became the first American woman in space. She was part of the STS-7 shuttle mission aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger. This was the seventh space shuttle mission, and was the second mission for the Space Shuttle Challenger. Her role aboard the shuttle was mission specialist.

The Challenger's second flight began at 7:33 a.m. EST, June 18, 1983, with an on-time liftoff. In addition to Sally Ride, crew members included Robert L. Crippen, commander, making his second Shuttle flight; Frederick H. Hauck, pilot; John M. Fabian and Norman Thagard, mission specialists. Not only was it the first flight of an American woman in space, but it was also the largest crew to fly in a single spacecraft at the time.

The objectives of the STS-7 mission included deploying two communications satellites, Anik C-2 for Telesat of Canada, and Palapa B-l for Indonesia. The mission also carried the first Shuttle Pallet Satellite (SPAS-l). SPAS-l was unique in that it was designed to operate in the payload bay, or be deployed by the RMS as a free-flying satellite. It carried 10 experiments to study the formation of metal alloys in microgravity and the use of remote sensing scanners. Seven Get Away Special canisters were held in the cargo bay and contained a wide variety of experiments, including one to test the effects of zero gravity on ant colonies. An important experiment on space sickness was also carried out by the crew.

STS-7 landed June 24, 1983, at 6:57 a.m. PDT at Edwards AFB. The mission lasted 6 days, 2 hours, 23 minutes, 59 seconds. It covered about 2.2 million miles during 97 orbits of the Earth.

http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/sts-7/mission-sts-7.html

http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/ride-sk.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-7