Career Keepsakes

The checklists Sally Ride included in her personal papers help tell the story of her remarkable life.

Prior to her death in 2012 at age 61, science educator and former NASA astronaut Sally K. Ride set aside items of personal importance, including more than 23 cubic feet of papers, photographs, certificates, and film that are now in the National Air and Space Museum Archives. The papers chronicle her career from the 1970s through the 2010s, including checklists for air- and spacecraft. One checklist was for the Northrop T-38 Talon, a jet that NASA’s pilot-astronauts use to maintain flying proficiency. This photo shows Ride’s handwritten notes in the interior pages of her ascent checklist for space shuttle mission STS-7. It was on that mission, in 1983, that she became the first American woman in space.