Pin, NASA 25th Anniversary, Sally Ride

This NASA twenty-fifth anniversary pin was owned by Dr. Sally K. Ride. The organization celebrated its anniversary in 1983, the same year that Sally took her historic flight on STS-7 and became the first American woman in space. The pin adapts the NASA logotype nicknamed the "worm" created in 1975.

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. 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 pin to the Museum in 2013.