Sally Ride's NASA Career Was Even More Interesting Than You Thought

Sally Ride was the first astronaut to operate the robotic Canadarm. We know Sally Ride, born on this day in 1951, as the first American woman in space (and since her death in 2012, we've known her as the only openly LGBT American astronaut so far) but she did much more than just show up for the ride, whether on her first Space Shuttle flight or during her 34-year career as an astronaut and physicist. It's easy for the basic fact of Ride's identity to eclipse her actual work. Her 1983 Challenger flight was groundbreaking, but in many ways the rest of her career is far more interesting; Ride herself certainly thought so, based on her comments in several interviews. From designing Canadarm 1 to investigating the loss of two Space Shuttles, and from X-rays in the interstellar medium to the physics of lasers, here's a look at what the first American woman in space actually did.