Sally Ride

Sally Ride doesn't look like a woman outrageous enough to sit on top of a stack of enormous flaming rockets. There's absolutely nothing about her refined appearance or manner to suggest she has the grit to travel into the great, dark, airless abyss strapped to the seat of a hurtling piece of machinery. She's small, reserved, a reluctant heroine uneasy with eminence, a self-possessed but distant star who navigates her rarefied universe with quiet control.

A biography of Sally Ride, America's first female astronaut, will be published in 2013, Simon & Schuster announced Tuesday. Ride died at age 61 of pancreatic cancer just eight days ago. The as-yet-untitled book will be written by journalist Lynn Sherr, who spent more than 30 years with ABC News, covered the space shuttle program for ABC from 1981 to 1986 and got to know Ride through her work. Ride was not recruited to be an astronaut - she was one of 8,300 people who answered a want ad. After leaving the space program, Ride became involved in encouraging young women to study science.

Sally Ride, the nation's first female astronaut, will talk with middle school students throughout the Irvine Unified School District on Thursday at a Science Career Options conference at UC Irvine. This is the district's ninth annual middle school conference, designed to increase students' interest in science-related careers and encourage them to take more science and math classes in high school. Ride is one of several speakers scheduled for the event.

Pancreatic cancer, the most aggressive type of cancer, has claimed the life of astronaut Sally Ride, the first American woman in space. Ride died Monday at age of 61 after a 17-month-long battle against the disease. Pancreatic cancer is the fourth leading cause of cancer-related deaths for people in the United States. It has the lowest survival rate of any type of cancer - according to the American Cancer Society, the one-year survival rate is 20% for all stages of pancreatic cancer combined.

Astronaut Sally Ride, a bureaucrat in NASA's headquarters while the space shuttle is being fixed, said today that the space agency has done a good job and that she has changed her decision not to go into orbit again. In the wake of the Challenger accident Jan. 28, Ride said she wouldn't want to ride the shuttle. But she said that's all in the past.

Astronaut Sally Ride will represent Gov. George Deukmejian as California's official representative at President Reagan's inauguration, the governor's office announced. The astronaut, who made history last June as the first American woman in space aboard the shuttle Challenger, will ride in California's car during the inaugural parade Monday.

Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, will recount her experiences as an astronaut and discuss the future of the space program in a lecture Friday sponsored by UC Irvine. Ride also is expected to talk about her work on the presidential commission that investigated the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger Jan. 28. Her lecture will begin at 8 p.m. at South Coast Community Church, 5120 Bonita Canyon Drive, Irvine.

Sally Kristen Ride, the United States' first woman in space, looks at the headlines these days, and, like many Americans, reacts with a mixture of marvel and disbelief: Communism crumbles in Europe. An enemy of apartheid is freed. Superpowers insist on a reduction in nuclear arms. Ride, 38, is a pivotal figure in the history of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which, as much as any tentacle of the government, came to symbolize competition with the Soviets.

Dale B. Ride, a trustee of California State University and the father of America's first woman astronaut, has died from an apparent embolism. He was 67. Ride died at 1 a.m. Saturday after prostate surgery in Santa Monica Hospital. An autopsy was scheduled. After obtaining his doctorate in education from UCLA, Ride spent his four-decade career at Santa Monica Community College.

Veteran astronaut Sally Ride was named president of Space.com, an Internet site devoted to the news and science of space. Ride, who in 1983 became the first American woman in space, has worked closely with Space.com founder Lou Dobbs in launching the site in the last several months.

Sally Ride, the first American woman to travel to space, lost her battle with pancreatic cancer Monday at the age of 61. She flew two missions on the space shuttle and after leaving NASA she worked at Stanford University and then UC San Diego, where she was a physics professor and director of the California Space Institute. In 2001, she founded Sally Ride Science to encourage kids to pursue careers in science, engineering and math. George Fuller is a physics professor at UC San Diego who serves as director of the Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences at the university.

Sally Ride, who became the first American woman to fly in space when she rode in the space shuttle Challenger in 1983, has died. She was 61. Ride died Monday at her home in La Jolla after battling pancreatic cancer, said her mother, Joyce Ride of Claremont. Besides serving as an astronaut, Ride was a NASA advisor who helped study the Challenger and Columbia disasters. She also taught at UC San Diego and began a website, sallyridescience.com . A Los Angeles native, Ride was a Stanford University graduate.

As friends and former colleagues remembered astronaut Sally Ride, who died Monday of pancreatic cancer, a common theme was the grace with which she handled the responsibility of being the first American woman to fly in space. “She was a terribly nice person and, not surprisingly, enormously poised,” said Lynn Eden , a senior research scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, where Ride held a science fellowship from 1987 to 1989 when it was called the Center for International Security and Arms Control.

What are the odds that two girls in the same first-grade class in 1958 would both grow up to fly in space? Unlikely as it seems, Sally Ride and Kathryn Sullivan were grade school classmates who served together on the 13th space shuttle flight in 1984. They joined NASA together in 1978, when both were 26. Sullivan is now an assistant secretary of commerce for environmental observation and prediction, and deputy administrator, at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Sally Ride's death today at age 61 from pancreatic cancer is being mourned around the world. If you believe the headlines, it's because Ride was the first American woman to fly in space. But that's not Ride's biggest accomplishment. Her biggest accomplishment was teaching girls and women that the sky, literally, is the limit. It may be hard for today's youth to imagine, but there was a time when many couldn't fathom women as pilots, much less astronauts. When Ride became the first American woman to fly in space aboard the space shuttle Challenger in 1983, it shattered glass ceilings for millions of girls and women, helping redefine the role of the fairer sex. On Monday, women of a certain age did their best to try to put Ride's cultural significance into context -- and to do so in 140 characters.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver on Monday unveiled the first honorees for a new California Hall of Fame they hope will become a permanent fixture at the state museum in Sacramento. The honorees include 11 Californians and two prominent California families, the Hearsts and the Packards, who were deemed "trailblazers and legends." Shriver said the award is designed to highlight "people who really started from nothing and who changed the world."

Warning that the United States already has lost its leadership in two key areas of space exploration, astronaut Sally Ride urged the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in a report released today to return people to the moon by the year 2000 and use it as an orderly steppingstone to Mars. America's first woman in space called for a revitalized space program that will send Americans in an unhurried way outward into space and "from the highlands of the moon to the plains of Mars."

A NASA panel headed by astronaut Sally Ride will recommend development of a manned lunar base as the nation's next goal in space instead of a more glamorous flight to Mars, officials said today. But Ride, the first American woman in space and a veteran of two shuttle flights, told Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine that a manned outpost on the moon could serve as a steppingstone to Mars and that exploration of the red planet should remain as an ultimate American space objective.

Born: Encino, 1951 Family: Father taught political science at Santa Monica College; mother did volunteer work; one sister became a Presbyterian minister. Early schooling: Westlake School for Girls in Encino (now Harvard-Westlake High School) Favorite subjects: Math and science Least favorite subject: Sewing Sports: An avid tennis player at age 10; joined the junior U.S. tennis circuit and considered playing professional tennis until college.