Medal, Palapa Satellite, Sally Ride

This Palapa B1 Satellite medal was owned by Dr. Sally K. Ride. Palapa is the name for a series of communication satellites owned by Indosat, an Indonesian telecommunication company. The B1 was deployed in 1983 during STS-7, the space shuttle mission in which Ride became the first American woman in space.

A physicist with a Ph.D., Ride joined the astronaut corps in 1978 as a part of the first class of astronauts recruited specifically for the Space Shuttle Program. 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 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 medal to the Museum in 2013.