Sally Ride's Legacy: 40 Years of Inspiring Women in Space

June 18 marks the 40th anniversary of Sally Ride becoming the first American woman to travel into outer space. Ride's six-day mission on the space shuttle Challenger in 1983 shattered the glass ceiling for women in the US space program. Ride was also posthumously the first acknowledged gay person to become an astronaut. Since then, NASA has made strides in diversity, but an audit found a decade-long strategy has not made a meaningful impact on its diversity statistics across the agency’s workforce and leadership.