Sally Ride, the first American woman to travel to space.
Google honors Sally Ride on her 64th birthday by dedicating the today’s Google doodle to this astronaut.
Sally Ride was born in Los Angeles. She is credited for being the first American women in space, the youngest person ever in space at the age of 32, and also the first known LGBT person in space.
Ride’s life partner, Tam O’Shaunghnessy stated in a web post, “With whimsy, it expresses Sally’s sense of fun and adventure, and her ability to inspire young people”.
Google unveiled a series of five different Behind the Doodle animations that portray the inspiring journey of Ride which will show up each time a person visits Google’s home page.
Google has also celebrated Ride by devoting a two and a half minute animation video narrated by Artist Olivia Huynh. The video shows all the important milestones in Ride’s life. Ride’s journey from being a junior tennis player to a doctoral student at Stanford and then heading on to becoming the American space star is covered in the video.
From 1978 to 1988, Ride stayed at NASA, twice undertaking flights abroad the space shuttle Challenger.
The first mission was accomplished in 1983.
Ride has joined the University of California, San Diego faculty as a professor in 1989 and became a director of the University of California Space Institute.
She founded the educational company called Sally Ride Science in 2001.
Ride has dedicated her life to inspire next generation, especially girls, to pursue careers in Science, engineering, math and technology.
Ride is a recipient of the President Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor and efforts are being made to include her in the US Capitol’s Statuary Hall.
Ride died almost three years ago on July 23, 2012 from, pancreatic cancer.