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50 free Sally Ride trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Sally Ride answered a newspaper ad. In January 1977 she read in The Stanford Daily that NASA wanted women astronauts, sent for the forms, and eighteen months later was one of 35 'new guys' in the first class to include women. In June 1983 she rode Challenger into orbit on STS-7 as the first American woman in space, the youngest American to fly, and the operator of the robot arm she had helped develop. These 50 questions cover her whole life: the Encino tennis prodigy coached by Alice Marble who once played doubles against Billie Jean King, the Stanford physicist with a second degree in English literature, the CapCom for the second and third Shuttle flights, the press conference that asked whether she would weep, the 100 tampons, the Amelia Earhart scarf she carried on STS-41-G, the Rogers Commission and the O-ring tip she fed to Richard Feynman, the Columbia board, Sally Ride Science, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the obituary that revealed her 27-year partnership with Tam O'Shaughnessy. The expert tier asks about the Grumman Tiger and Svetlana Savitskaya. Every answer is cited to a page we checked and comes with a short explanation, so you learn something even when you miss.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Sally Ride became the first American woman in space in which year?
1983
She was also the third woman overall, after Soviet cosmonauts Valentina Tereshkova and Svetlana Savitskaya.
Q 02Which Space Shuttle carried Ride on her first flight?
Challenger
Both of her missions flew on the same orbiter, which was lost in 1986.
Q 03What was the designation of Ride's first spaceflight?
STS-7
The seventh Shuttle mission deployed two communications satellites and the first shuttle pallet satellite.
Q 04How old was Ride on her first flight in 1983, then the youngest American in space?
32
Younger Soviet cosmonauts had flown before her; Hayley Arceneaux, 29, became the youngest American in orbit in 2021.
Q 05In which city was Sally Ride born?
Santa Monica
She grew up in the Van Nuys and Encino neighbourhoods of the San Fernando Valley.
Q 06Which former world number one coached the ten-year-old Ride at tennis?
Alice Marble
By 1963 she was ranked 20th in Southern California for girls aged 12 and under.
Q 07Which tennis great became Ride's mentor after a 1972 doubles match at Lake Tahoe?
Billie Jean King
Martin Luther King III and Dexter King served as ball boys that day.
Q 08Ride left which Pennsylvania college after three semesters to try professional tennis?
Swarthmore
She had won the Eastern Intercollegiate Women's Singles title twice but was homesick and could not practise in snow.
Q 09Alongside physics, Ride earned a Stanford bachelor's degree in which subject?
English literature
At UCLA she had earned A's in both Shakespeare and quantum mechanics.
Q 10Ride's doctoral dissertation studied the interaction of X-rays with what?
The interstellar medium
Her adviser was Arthur B. C. Walker Jr.; she earned the PhD in 1978.
Q 11How did Ride first learn NASA was recruiting women astronauts?
A Stanford Daily article
She mailed off for the forms and became one of 8,079 applicants.
Q 12How many women were in NASA Astronaut Group 8, selected in 1978?
Six
The 35-strong class called itself 'TFNG', officially 'Thirty-Five New Guys'.
Q 13What did the 1978 astronaut class's nickname 'TFNG' officially stand for?
Thirty-Five New Guys
Inside the group it stood for a rather ruder military phrase for newcomers.
Q 21Which song's lyrics appeared on T-shirts at Ride's first launch?
'Mustang Sally'
'Ride, Sally Ride' comes from the Wilson Pickett hit.
Q 22How many tampons did NASA engineers infamously suggest packing for Ride's six-day flight?
100
They also asked her to help design a 'space makeup kit'.
Q 23STS-7 deployed Anik C2 for Canada and Palapa B1 for which country?
Indonesia
Both communications satellites went out in the first two days of the mission.
Q 24Into what shape did Ride bend the robot arm during STS-7?
Q 14Which NASA official phoned Ride on January 16, 1978, to tell her she was selected?
George Abbey
Abbey, the director of flight operations, later defended her choice for STS-7 against JSC director Chris Kraft.
Q 15During selection, NASA tested Ride for claustrophobia by placing her in what?
A 36-inch rescue ball
The Personal Rescue Enclosure was a fabric ball designed to move astronauts between Shuttles.
Q 16Which aircraft did Ride buy a part interest in to fly on weekends?
A Grumman Tiger
She enjoyed the T-38 jets so much she earned a private pilot's licence on her own time.
Q 17Which fellow astronaut did Ride marry in 1982?
Steven Hawley
She flew to the Kansas wedding in her own plane and wore white jeans; they divorced in 1987.
Q 18Ride was the first woman to hold which Mission Control role, on the second and third Shuttle flights?
CapCom
The capsule communicator is the one voice that speaks to the crew.
Q 19Which piece of Shuttle hardware did Ride help develop and operate in orbit?
The robot arm
The Remote Manipulator System, or Canadarm, deployed and retrieved the SPAS-1 pallet on STS-7.
Q 20Who commanded STS-7, Ride's first mission?
Robert Crippen
Crippen requested her again as flight engineer for STS-41-G.
A '7'
It mirrored the mission patch; STS-7 was also the first time a Shuttle was photographed in orbit, by the SPAS-1 camera.
Q 25Where did STS-7 land after bad weather ruled out Kennedy Space Center?
Edwards Air Force Base
The flight lasted 6 days, 2 hours, 23 minutes and 59 seconds.
Q 26What did the STS-7 crew present to President Reagan after the flight?
Flown jelly beans
Ride declined to appear with Bob Hope, whom she regarded as sexist.
Q 27Which Soviet cosmonaut did Ride meet for six hours in Budapest in 1983?
Svetlana Savitskaya
The second woman in space spoke English; they swapped gifts and signed first-day covers for each other.
Q 28On STS-41-G, which crewmate became the first American woman to walk in space?
Kathryn Sullivan
It was the first time two women had been in space together.
Q 29What keepsake did Ride carry on her second mission?
Amelia Earhart's silk scarf
She also used the robot arm to shake loose a jammed radar antenna during the flight.
Q 30Roughly how many hours did Ride spend in space over her two flights?
343
STS-41-G alone completed 132 orbits in 197.5 hours.