Happy Throwback Thursday! This week’s throwback year is 1983, the year Sally Ride became the first American woman to fly in space! At 32, she was also the youngest American to have flown in space. She flew on the Space Shuttle Challenger on the STS-7 mission. The purpose of the mission was to deploy 2 communications satellites. It also carried experiments to study the formation of metal alloys in microgravity. Ride flew on a second space mission in 1984 before leaving NASA in 1987. In all, she spent more than 343 hours in space. Learn more about Sally Ride’s amazing life and career in the audio below!