2-839-769 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

NASA JSC temporary badge belonging to Sally K. Ride, 1977. This NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) temporary ID badge belonged to Dr. Sally K. Ride. It was issued to her in October 1977 when she arrived there for a week of medical tests and interviews for the astronaut selection program. Ride, then a Ph.D. candidate in physics at Stanford University, had applied to the program in January along with nearly 8,000 other people. The invitation to JSC meant that she was a finalist for the program. Three months later, in January 1978, NASA announced that she and five other women and 29 men had been chosen to form the first class of astronauts for the space shuttle era. This historic astronaut class also was the first to include women, African Americans, and an American of Asian descent.