Sally Ride Parents: Meet Carol Joyce Anderson, Dale Burdell Ride

Sally Ride was an American astronaut and physicist. She was the daughter of Carol Joyce Anderson and Dale Burdell Ride.

Both parents were Presbyterian Church elders. Her Norwegian-born mother had volunteered as a counsellor at a women’s penitentiary prison. During World War II, her father served in the United States Army’s 103rd Infantry Division in Europe.

After the war, he attended Haverford College on the G.I. Bill, obtained a master’s degree in teaching at the University of California, Los Angeles and went on to teach political science at Santa Monica College.

Sally Ride received a Bachelor of Science degree in physics and a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature from Stanford University in 1973, a Master of Science degree in physics in 1975, and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in physics in 1978 for research on the interaction of X-rays with the interstellar medium.

She was chosen as a mission specialist astronaut with NASA Astronaut Group 8, the first class of female NASA astronauts. She travelled in space on the Space Shuttle Challenger during the STS-7 mission in June 1983. Her second space trip was the STS-41-G mission aboard Challenger in 1984. She was in orbit for a total of 343 hours. She retired in 1987.