Sally Ride Science at UC San Diego

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Sally Ride Science at UC San Diego

Sally Ride Science at UC San Diego helps educators build students’ STEM literacy and connect what students are learning to exciting STEM careers.

09/10/2026

15 years ago, in 2011, NASA launched the twin GRAIL satellites aboard a Delta rocket from Cape Canaveral. The two satellites orbited the Moon for 15 months to map its gravity. During the mission, Sally Ride Science ran GRAIL MoonKAM, an educational outreach program that allowed students to request photos of the lunar surface from cameras on the satellites. NASA held a national contest to name the twin satellites. The winning names, “Ebb” and “Flow,” were suggested by fourth-graders at Emily Dickinson Elementary School in Bozeman, Montana. https://buff.ly/0WjS6w2 NASA illustration

09/09/2026

Sally Ride, shown with her mission STS-7 crewmates, realized soon after she became the first American woman in space in 1983 that many young girls looked up to her as a role model. The quote is from an interview in the September 2012 issue of Harvard Business Review. Ride gave the interview just weeks before her death from pancreatic cancer in July of that year: https://buff.ly/rITSuNK NASA photo

09/08/2026

St. Thomas the Apostle Episcopal Church near NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston has unveiled a new public monument honoring trailblazers in America's space program who were Black, female or from other underrepresented groups. The monument, called Earthrise, was funded by the John and Joseph Talbot Fund of the Episcopal Diocese of Texas. Charles Bolden, retired astronaut and former NASA administrator, is shown with his plaque during the dedication of the monument.
https://buff.ly/ejysReP Episcopal Diocese of Texas photo

09/07/2026

NASA astronaut Jessica Meir and Sophie Adenot of the European Space Agency are shown in the International Space Station's Quest airlock preparing for a spacewalk that took place last Tuesday. During the 6-hour 49-minute spacewalk, the two installed a retroflector, replaced a high-definition camera and swabbed the space station’s exterior for microorganisms. It was the seventh spacewalk for Meir and the sixth all-female spacewalk for NASA. Meir conducted the first all-female spacewalk with crewmate Christina Koch in 2018. https://buff.ly/b8Xne8Z NASA photo

09/04/2026

On Sept. 4, 1984, the crew of NASA mission STS-41G donned civilian clothes to meet the press and pose for photos. The seven would blast off on Oct. 5 of that year aboard shuttle Challenger on what was Sally Ride’s second spaceflight and the first space mission with two female crew members. Shown are, front row from left, Marc Garneau, Paul Scully-Power and Commander Robert Crippen; second row, Jon McBride, David Leestma and Ride; back, Kathy Sullivan. https://buff.ly/H0iHVJA NASA photo

09/03/2026

We were saddened to hear of the death of feminist trailblazer Gloria Steinem at the age of 92. Steinem is shown on Aug. 10, 1983, talking with tennis great Billie Jean King and Sally Ride during a Ms. Magazine reception honoring Ride after she became the first American woman in space. Steinem interviewed Ride about the sexist questions she was asked by the media, and the interview was later turned into an animated video, "Sally Ride on Dumb Questions," by Blank on Blank: https://tinyurl.com/y4w8ryd6

The Associated Press photo appears in "Sally Ride: A Photobiography of America's Pioneering Woman in Space" by Tam O'Shaughnessy, Ride's life partner.

09/02/2026

Christa McAuliffe, the teacher who died along with six crewmates in the shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986, was born in 1948. She was chosen from among 11,000 teachers who applied for the program. Learn more from Smithsonian Magazine about her selection and her experience preparing to go to space: https://buff.ly/kJX1JfS NASA photo

09/01/2026

Astronaut Jonny Kim is leaving NASA after nine years to return to active duty as a lieutenant commander in the US Navy. Even before he became an astronaut and spent eight months on the International Space Station, Kim had a truly amazing resume. The son of South Korean immigrants, he served as a Navy SEAL before getting his medical degree from Harvard, and he’s a designated naval aviator and flight surgeon. https://ift.tt/QD6lKhT NASA photo

08/31/2026

The launch of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope on Sunday has focused new attention on the legacy of Roman, NASA's first chief astronomer and first female executive. She earned her doctorate in astronomy at the University of Chicago before joining the space agency in 1959 and establishing its astronomy program. Roman is remembered as the "Mother of Hubble" for her crucial role in launching the Hubble Space Telescope. She died in 2018 at the age of 93. https://buff.ly/V8H9k9G

08/28/2026

Lesson plans for students have always been designed by adults. But a new summer program created by San Diego County Office of Education and Sally Ride Science took a fresh approach – with promising results. The STEM Design Team Summer Academy brought together six educators and 17 high school students to design and improve STEM lessons. "We kind of blurred the lines between who's the teacher and who's the learner," said Chelsea Cochrane, science coordinator at SDCOE. "Teachers got to see that the students can teach them a thing or two as well." Read about the academy on the UC San Diego Extended Studies blog: https://buff.ly/RGh1Afp

Address

San Diego, CA

Telephone

+18585340804

Website

https://sallyridescience.ucsd.edu/

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