Badge, NASA Guest, STS-41G Landing, Dale Ride, Sally Ride

This NASA ID badge owned by Dale Ride, Dr. Sally K. Ride's father, allowed him into the viewing area for the landing of STS 41-G. He later gave the badge to her daughter. STS 41-G, which launched in October 1984, was Sally Ride's second space flight. It was also the first mission with two female crew members, as Kathy Sullivan was also serving as a Mission Specialist on the flight. Although Ride was scheduled for a third flight in July 1986, the destruction of the space shuttle Challenger disrupted the schedule, and Ride retired before NASA returned to space.

Sally Ride became the first American woman in space when she flew aboard STS-7 in 1983. A physicist with a Ph.D., she joined the astronaut corps in 1978 as a part of the first class of astronauts recruited specifically for the Space Shuttle Program. Viewed as a leader in the NASA community, she served on the Rogers Commission after the Challenger disaster in 1986 as well as the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) in 2003. She also led the task force that produced a visionary strategic planning report in 1987 titled, “NASA Leadership and America’s Future in Space,” but known popularly as the Ride Report.

After she retired from NASA in 1987, Dr. Ride taught first at Stanford and later at the University of California, San Diego. Until her death in 2012, she was president and CEO of Sally Ride Science, a company that promoted science education.

Dr. Ride’s partner, Dr. Tam O’Shaughnessy, donated the ID badge to the Museum in 2013.