NEELIN VIEWS: Ride had major impact on space program

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/04/2023 (899 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

This Wednesday marks the 41st anniversary of Sally Ride, the first North American woman ever to fly in space, being named an astronaut. This accomplishment for Ride was the start of many, and numerous astronauts, both women and men, would follow in her footsteps.

The accomplishments made by those pursuing the same dreams and hopes as Ride were major breakthroughs for the era of space flight.

Ride was born in 1951 in Los Angeles and went on to graduate from Stanford University with a bachelor’s degree in physics and a bachelor’s in English literature.

She later earned her master’s and then a doctorate in physics, before being chosen by NASA as a mission specialist for NASA astronaut group 8. This was the first class of NASA astronauts to include women. She was named a NASA astronaut in 1982. This was an incredible feat — no woman had ever been named a NASA astronaut.

A year later, Ride finally flew on the space shuttle Challenger for the STS-7 mission. Ride flew into space a second time on the STS-41-G mission a year after, and would ultimately end up racking up more than 343 hours in space by the end of her career with NASA in 1987.

The second woman ever to fly to space, Svetlana Savitskaya, did so less than a year before Ride did. Savitskaya was chosen in 1980 for the second-ever group of female Russian cosmonauts, and in 1981, she went on a short flight to Salyut N-7 — a space station. A year later, in 1982, she launched with two others on the Soyuz T-5. She would continue to go on for two more missions, one being a major mission in 1984. This mission aboard the Soyuz T-12 made Savitskaya the first woman ever to spacewalk.

Interestingly, both of these women were preceded by Valentina Tereshkova, a pioneer for female cosmonauts. Tereshkova was selected due to her previous experience with skydiving and was added to the first group of five female cosmonauts in 1963.

Tereshkova underwent intense training, and she was selected for the solo flight at the age of 26 — the youngest to do so — that same year. She then became the only woman ever to have flown into space solo, and spent two days overall in space before returning to Earth. It took almost two decades for other female cosmonauts and astronauts to follow suit.

On the other hand, the first space flight of a Canadian woman would occur a decade after Ride, in 1992.

Roberta Bondar was born in 1945 in Ontario, where she pursued her bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate. Before becoming an astronaut, she worked as a clinical science researcher and neurologist.

In 1983, the Canadian astronaut program was created to recruit Canada’s first astronauts in an era of heavy space exploration. Bondar applied shortly after it was announced, and following months of interviews and more, she was chosen as a member of the program. She was one of six Canadians picked for this program — out of those six Canadians, there had been 4,300 overall applicants, with only 11 per cent of them being women.

Bondar began her astronaut training in early 1984, and it would take several years until she would actually see space.

It was in that same year that a huge accomplishment was made — the first Canadian ever made it to space. Marc Garneau made history when he became the first Canadian astronaut to accomplish this feat after serving for 10 years in the army. Garneau was alongside Bondar in the group of six applicants selected, and he became the head of the STS-41G mission — the ground-breaking mission that inspired future Canadian astronauts. Bondar finally accomplished her mission in early 1992 on the NASA mission STS-42 and stayed in space for six days.

As we look over them multiple accomplishments that pioneered space exploration not only for women, but for Canadians and all alike, we have many women to thank — whether it be Sally Ride, Valentina Tereshkova or Roberta Bondar, or even Marc Garneau. Without them, we wouldn’t have been able to make so much progress in space exploration in the past few decades.

As NASA plans to return to a crewed moon-orbiting mission for the first time since 1972 — this time including both Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen and female mission specialist Cristina Hammock Koch — we have these trailblazers to thank for leading the way into the future.

» Shayla Ramsden is a Grade 11 student at École secondaire Neelin High School