STS-7

STS-7 carried a five-person crew, but one seat drew the overwhelming majority of public attention. Mission Specialist Sally Ride, a physicist who had joined NASA's astronaut corps in 1978 as part of the first class to include women, was about to become the first American woman to fly in space, nearly twenty years after Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova had become the first woman in space of any nationality.

Commanded by Robert Crippen, who had flown as pilot on STS-1 two years earlier, Challenger lifted off on June 18, 1983, carrying Ride alongside four male crewmates. Ride handled some of the mission's most technically demanding work, operating the Shuttle's robotic Canadarm to deploy and later retrieve the Shuttle Pallet Satellite, a free-flying platform used for scientific experiments, becoming the first person to use the robotic arm to both release and recapture a satellite in orbit.

The mission also deployed two communications satellites for Canada and Indonesia, continuing the Shuttle's growing role as a commercial satellite-launching platform in its early years. Throughout the six-day flight, Ride became something of a media phenomenon on the ground, fielding questions in press conferences that focused heavily on her gender rather than her technical role, a pattern she later spoke about candidly as reflecting the era's unfamiliarity with women in such positions.

Challenger returned to a smooth landing at Edwards Air Force Base on June 24, and Ride's flight became a defining moment in the history of women in spaceflight, opening the door for the many female astronauts who would follow her into orbit over the following decades.

STS-7 made Sally Ride a household name and a lasting symbol of expanding opportunity in American spaceflight, opening the door for the many women who followed her into NASA's astronaut corps and into orbit over the following decades.

Ride's technical work operating the Canadarm to deploy and retrieve a free-flying satellite also demonstrated capabilities the Shuttle would rely on repeatedly throughout its career, from satellite servicing to space station construction.

Beyond her spaceflights, Ride's later work investigating both the Challenger and Columbia accidents, the only person to serve on both review boards, cemented her legacy as one of the most consequential figures in the history of the Space Shuttle program.