Sally Ride Lucía Arcos and Sergio Azcona My name is Sally Kristen Ride but most people call me Sally Ride. I was born in California on May 26th, 1951 and I died on July 23th 2012 from pancreatic cancer in California. I grew up in Los Angeles and then, I initially became a professional tennis player in my country. Nonetheless, later I focused on being an astronaut and astrophysicist. I was lucky and I prospered in this dream becoming the first American woman to reach outer space and the third one in the world, after Valentina Tereshkova and Sveltlana Savits. Thanks to this I opened new possibilities to women, which during my times were not commonly accepted in most technical and scientific professions. Moreover, I was a homosexual woman (an aspect of my life that was not revealed until my death), what did not make my life easier. In fact, the movements for the rights of homosexual, bisexual and transgender people were not so advanced then, so I was force to hide this if I wanted to be launched to outer space in the future. Within my working life, I was selected for the NASA space programme (“NASA Astronaut Group 8”) in 1978. That made me the happiest woman in the world, because my dream had become true. I was part of the team that made a metal robot arm. This was bent in the shape of a seven, signifying the mission number.
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