A Ride to space
Almost 20 years later, the United States finally sent a woman to space. Sally Ride was one of 35 people selected in 1978 as the first class of NASA astronauts that included women and minorities. She was chosen among five other women out of 8,000 applicants, according to NASA. Ride was among the first four of that class to travel to space as a member of the Space Shuttle Challenger’s STS-7 crew, which lifted off on June 18, 1983.
