The US space program was in operation for more than two decades before a female astronaut claimed a seat on a NASA rocket. During the space agency’s earliest years, officials deemed spaceflight a feat only suitable for men, and specifically, military test pilots. Ride was also posthumously the first acknowledged gay person to become an astronaut. She was not open about her personal life, according to former NASA astronaut Steve Hawley, who was married to Ride from 1982 to 1987.
Ride got her role as an astronaut candidate after initially mailing in an application — one of more than 8,000 people that did so. Of those, only 1,251 women were considered qualified by NASA. “There were no female role models,” Sherr said. The Soviet Union sent the first woman to space. Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova was launched into orbit in 1963. It would be two decades before the next woman would fly into space — another Soviet cosmonaut, Svetlana Savitskaya, in 1982.