T-Minus Three Days: Sally Ride's Own STS-7 Schedule, Crew Ground Rules, and Pilot Flight Record

On the morning of June 18, 1983, Sally Ride rocketed into space aboard Challenger on STS-7 at 7:33 a.m. EDT with four male crewmates, becoming the first American woman to fly in space. Her launch came twenty years after Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, and the pressure on her was enormous. "The fact that I was going to be the first American woman to go into space carried huge expectations along with it," Ride recalled. These eight pages, dated June 9, 1983, are from her own papers in the run-up to that day: pre-launch schedules, flight crew ground rules, and her Individual Pilot Flight Record. The schedule begins three days before launch and includes the crew's dinner at the "Beach House," a pre-launch tradition for astronauts.

The record also carries a handwritten note: "Congratulations Sally, another first for you, first MS [Mission Specialist] of your group to pass the 1K mark." It fits her story. Ride, along with Rick Hauck and John Fabian, was one of the first from the astronaut Class of 1978 named to a shuttle crew, and the mission she trained for was a demanding one. Crippen, Hauck, Fabian, and Ride were joined by physician Norm Thagard to form the first five-person shuttle crew. Ride, who had served as capcom on STS-2 and STS-3 and became an expert on the robotic arm, used it to deploy the SPAS-01 satellite and retrieve it two days later, the first time the shuttle was used to return a spacecraft to Earth. Challenger landed at Edwards Air Force Base on June 24, 1983, after nearly six and a half days in orbit. Ride died in 2012 at the age of 61. Few documents from the days before a historic flight survive in private hands, and these are from the astronaut herself.