Model, Space Shuttle Stack, Endeavour, 1:100, Sally Ride

This model of the Space Shuttle stack, including the orbiter Endeavour, belonged to Dr. Sally K. Ride. Endeavour was the fifth and final shuttle; it replaced Challenger, which was destroyed in a catastrophic launch in 1986. Endeavour's first flight was STS-49 in 1992, and it was formally decommissioned after STS-134 in 2011. The payload bay doors of the model open to reveal the Remote Manipulator System (RMS), a robotic arm used to deploy and retrieve satellites. Ride never flew on Endeavour, but she operated the robotic arm on two missions.

Sally Ride became the first American woman in space when she flew on the STS-7 shuttle mission in 1983. Her second and last space mission was STS-41G in 1984. A physicist with a Ph.D., she joined the astronaut corps in 1978 in 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 accident in 1986 and the Columbia Accident Investigation Board 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 left NASA in 1987, Dr. Ride taught first at Stanford and later at the University of California, San Diego, where she also served as the director of the California Space Institute. Until her death in 2012, she was president and CEO of Sally Ride Science, a company she founded to promote science education.

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