Sally Ride’s pioneering career as an astronaut and educator is recalled in “Forever: Sally,” a new video from the Postal Service.
Ride made history as the first American woman in space when she traveled aboard the shuttle Challenger in June 1983.
“For me, that changed my dream of being an astronaut into something more of a goal,” Peggy Whitson, a NASA astronaut, says in the video. “[It] let me know that other women could do this job.”
The 4-minute tribute was shown at the recent Sally Ride stamp dedication ceremony.
Other comments come from National Air and Space Museum curators Valerie Neal and Margaret Weitekamp, former NASA astronaut Rick Hauck, and Ed Abeyta, an associate dean at the University of California San Diego, where Ride was a physics professor.
Lynn Sherr, a former ABC News reporter who wrote a biography of Ride, says the new stamp will remind everyone of Ride’s legacy.
“Seeing that megawatt grin on stamps all over this country … is a great way to remember that,” Sherr says.