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| Sally Ride, the first US woman in space, dies aged 61 | Sally Ride, the first US woman in space, dies aged 61 |
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| Sally Ride, the first US woman to travel into space, has died aged 61 after a 17-month battle with pancreatic cancer, her foundation announced. | Sally Ride, the first US woman to travel into space, has died aged 61 after a 17-month battle with pancreatic cancer, her foundation announced. |
| "Sally's historic flight into space captured the nation's imagination and made her a household name," Sally Ride Science href="https://www.sallyridescience.com/sallyride/bio" >said in a statement. | |
| She blasted off in the US space shuttle Challenger in June 1983. | She blasted off in the US space shuttle Challenger in June 1983. |
| Ride was not the first woman in space - that was Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova in June 1963. | Ride was not the first woman in space - that was Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova in June 1963. |
| Ride died on Monday in La Jolla, California. | Ride died on Monday in La Jolla, California. |
| National hero | |
| In a statement, US President Barack Obama said he was "deeply saddened to hear about the passing of Sally Ride". | |
| "As the first American woman to travel into space, Sally was a national hero and a powerful role model. | |
| Ride was born and grew up in Los Angeles, California, attending Stanford University for master's and doctorate degrees in physics. | |
| According to her foundation, Ride applied to Nasa after seeing an ad in the Stanford student newspaper, calling for scientists and engineers, including women to apply to the astronaut corps. | |
| She became an astronaut in 1978, and went on her first space shuttle mission on board the Challenger in 1983 at the age of 32. | |
| She reached space again the following year, and was scheduled for a third trip when the Challenger space shuttle exploded in 1986. | |
| Following the accident, she served as a member of the presidential commission that investigated the causes of the fatal accident. She also served on a similar board following the Columbia space shuttle accident in 2003. | |
| "Sally Ride broke barriers with grace and professionalism - and literally changed the face of America's space program," Nasa administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement. "She will be missed, but her star will always shine brightly." | |
| After leaving Nasa, Ride became a professor at University of California, San Diego, and served as a science fellow at Stanford University. | |
| She launched Sally Ride Science, which created science programmes and publications for young students, in 2001. She also wrote five children's science books. | |
| Ride is survived by her mother and partner Tam O'Shaughnessy. |