Sally Ride
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46 free Sally Ride trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Sep 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 46 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 46 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which cosmonaut became the first woman in space, twenty years before Ride?
Valentina Tereshkova
Valentina Tereshkova. The former textile worker orbited for three days in 1963, but Moscow then waited 19 years to fly a second woman, by which time NASA had Ride in training.
Q 02Which Space Shuttle carried Ride on her first flight?
Challenger
Challenger. Ride flew both her missions aboard it and was training for a third when it broke apart after launch in 1986, a loss she was then asked to help investigate.
Q 03How did Ride sum up her first flight to reporters after landing?
The most fun I'll ever have
The most fun I'll ever have. What followed was less fun: months of interviews and appearances that she called incessant, until a second flight assignment put her safely back in training.
Q 04Ride, 32, was the youngest American in orbit until 2021, when a 29-year-old flew with which company?
SpaceX
SpaceX. Hayley Arceneaux was given her seat because the flight was raising money for St Jude, the children's hospital that treated her bone cancer at ten and later hired her as a physician assistant.
Q 05Ride's first mission carried an experiment on which ailment?
Space sickness
Space sickness. The nausea hits many astronauts in their first days of weightlessness, so crewmate Norman Thagard, a doctor, ran tests on it in orbit.
Q 06Before her first flight, reporters asked Ride whether she did what when things went wrong at work?
Cry
Cry. Ride sat politely through that and a question about whether the flight would harm her reproductive organs, then said it was too bad her trip was such a big deal.
Q 07Which tennis champion encouraged the young Ride to turn professional?
Billie Jean King
Billie Jean King. Ride decided against the tour and chose physics instead, though she later named King as one of her role models.
Q 08Assuming a woman astronaut would want one, what did NASA engineers design for Ride's first flight?
A makeup kit
A makeup kit. Ride called advising on it about the last thing she wanted to spend training time on, and later joked about a makeup kit brought to you by NASA engineers.
Q 09Alongside physics, Ride earned a Stanford bachelor's degree in which subject?
English literature
English literature. Ride earned the arts degree side by side with her physics one and went on writing: after her flights she turned out a string of science books for children.
Q 10Which member of Ride's astronaut class became the first African American in space ten weeks after her flight?
Guion Bluford
Guion Bluford. He flew on the very next Shuttle mission, which lifted off in darkness, a timing forced by the Indian satellite it carried, and came home at night too.
Q 11How did Ride first learn NASA was recruiting women astronauts?
A Stanford Daily article
A Stanford Daily article. It said NASA wanted scientists and, for the first time, women, so Ride dashed off a handwritten note asking for the forms, and went on to beat some 8,000 other applicants.
Q 12Which classmate of Ride's became the second American woman in space?
Judith Resnik
Judith Resnik. The electrical engineer flew on a new orbiter's maiden voyage in 1984, with Ride's husband among her crewmates, and died in the 1986 launch disaster that Ride helped to investigate.
Q 13What did 'TFNG', the nickname of Ride's 1978 astronaut class, officially stand for?
Q 21How many tampons did NASA engineers infamously suggest packing for Ride's six-day flight?
100
100. When the engineers asked whether that was the right number for a week in orbit, Ride told them it was not, and that they could cut it in half with no problem at all.
Q 22Ride's second mission in 1984 carried the first astronaut from which country?
Canada
Canada. Marc Garneau flew as a guest researcher on what was then the largest crew ever launched, seven people, and later returned to orbit twice as a fully trained astronaut.
Q 23A satellite released and recaptured by Ride's first crew carried a camera that took the first photograph of what?
A Space Shuttle in orbit
Thirty-Five New Guys
Thirty-Five New Guys. NASA had hired no astronauts for nearly a decade, so the 35 recruits of 1978, six women among them, arrived to find they outnumbered the veterans they were joining.
Q 14Which toy maker's 2017 'Women of NASA' set put a Ride figure beside Mae Jemison and Margaret Hamilton?
Lego
Lego. The set began as a science writer's proposal on the company's fan site, where other users voted it into production, and it added the astronomer Nancy Grace Roman as a fourth figure.
Q 15Ride so enjoyed training flights in NASA's T-38 jets that she went on to earn what?
A private pilot's licence
A private pilot's licence. Ride had never even sat in a light plane before joining NASA, where scientists like her only rode in the back seat of the jets, so she took lessons in her own time.
Q 16Which fellow astronaut did Ride marry in 1982?
Steven Hawley
Steven Hawley. They divorced in 1987, and after her death he remembered her as a very private person who found herself a very public persona, a role she was never fully comfortable in.
Q 17Ride was the first woman to hold which Mission Control role, on the second and third Shuttle flights?
CapCom
CapCom. The capsule communicator is the one voice that speaks to a crew in orbit, and on the second Shuttle flight Ride arranged their wake-up call: a Muppets sketch called 'Pigs in Space'.
Q 18Which piece of Shuttle hardware did Ride help develop and operate in orbit?
The robot arm
The robot arm. Ride spent two years helping to test it and write its procedures, then used it on her first flight for the Shuttle's first release and recapture of a satellite.
Q 19Which pilot of the first Shuttle flight commanded Ride's crew?
Robert Crippen
Robert Crippen. He had a say in choosing Ride for his crew, made her his flight engineer, and asked for her again in the same seat on her second mission.
Q 20T-shirts at Ride's first launch read 'Ride, Sally Ride', a line borrowed from which song?
'Mustang Sally'
'Mustang Sally'. Its writer first called it 'Mustang Mama' until Aretha Franklin suggested the change, and Wilson Pickett's hit version gave the launch-day crowd its slogan.
A Space Shuttle in orbit. The camera was almost an afterthought, Ride recalled, yet the crew spent far longer than planned composing the shot, much to mission control's surprise.
Q 24Where did Ride's first flight land after bad weather ruled out Kennedy Space Center?
Edwards Air Force Base
Edwards Air Force Base. It should have been the first Shuttle landing back at the launch site, so the red carpet and the crew's families were waiting in Florida as they touched down in California.
Q 25Which sweets did the White House send into orbit with Ride's first crew?
Jelly beans
Jelly beans. President Reagan had taken to them years earlier as a substitute for smoking, and Ride's crew were surprised to find a supply tucked among their food in orbit.
Q 26In 2019 which doll brand honoured Ride in its Inspiring Women series, alongside Rosa Parks?
Barbie
Barbie. Ride was known for guarding her privacy, but seven years after her death Mattel put a doll in her likeness on sale.
Q 27On Ride's second flight, which crewmate became the first American woman to walk in space?
Kathryn Sullivan
Kathryn Sullivan. She stepped outside with David Leestma to rehearse refuelling a satellite in orbit, on the first flight ever to carry two women at once.
Q 28Which film festival premiered Sally, the 2025 documentary about Ride and the partner she kept hidden?
Sundance
Sundance. Ride never let a film be made of her life, so the National Geographic documentary came more than a decade after her death, told largely by her partner of 27 years.
Q 29Which presidential panel into the 1986 Shuttle loss did Ride sit on?
The Rogers Commission
The Rogers Commission. Ride was its only serving astronaut, and she never flew again: the fleet stayed grounded so long that she left NASA first.
Q 30To whom was Ride's tip about cold-stiffened O-rings passed to protect her as a source?
Richard Feynman
Richard Feynman. General Donald Kutyna dropped the hint over a car carburettor at his house, and days later Feynman dunked a piece of O-ring in iced water at a televised hearing.