Sally Ride flew to space 43 years ago today. She still has the best astronaut name.

Forty-three years have passed since Sally Ride strapped into a NASA shuttle for STS-7, making her the first American woman in space on June 18, 1983 aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger. As mission specialist and flight engineer, Ride arrived at NASA with a Stanford PhD in physics and quickly emerged as a trailblazer in a field long dominated by men. Her selection in 1978, part of a class of 35 new astronauts, included just six women, underscoring the era's gender gap. After completing training in 1979 and earning a pilot's license, she was prepared for spaceflight and helped redefine who could reach the stars.

Ride flew again on STS-41G in 1984 aboard Challenger, the first mission with two women and the first to include a female spacewalker, Kathryn Sullivan. After the 1986 Challenger disaster, she aided the investigation. She later moved into academia and held a leadership role at Space.com. Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama asked her to head NASA, offers she declined. Ride died in 2012 of pancreatic cancer and was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013. She is now recognized as a trailblazer and the first known LGBTQ+ astronaut, a milestone acknowledged after NASA's policies evolved.