Bill, earned a master's degree in education at the University of California, Los Angeles,[2]: 4–6  and became a political science professor at Santa Monica College.

[2]: 32–38 Ride entered the University of California, Los Angeles, where she enrolled in courses in Shakespeare and quantum mechanics, earning A's in both subjects.

She was romantically involved with the teaching assistant, John Tompkins, but the relationship ended in September when he went to Moscow to conduct research at the Institute for High Energy Physics.

Her foray into professional tennis was unsuccessful; after playing three matches in a single August morning her whole body ached the following day.

[7] She wrote her doctoral dissertation on "the interaction of X-rays with the interstellar medium",[8] under the supervision of Arthur B. C. Walker Jr.[9] At Stanford, Ride renewed her acquaintance with Molly Tyson, who was a year younger than her.

[2]: 45–49  To earn money Ride and her then-girlfriend Tyson gave tennis lessons, and in 1971 and 1972 they were counselors at Dennis Van der Meer's TennisAmerica summer camp at Lake Tahoe, Nevada.

Tyson ended their relationship in 1975, and Ride moved in with Bill Colson, a fellow graduate physics student who was recently divorced.

The ceremony was jointly conducted by Hawley's father Bernard, the pastor at the local Presbyterian church, and Ride's sister Bear.

Factors in Ride's favor included her agreeable personality and ability to work with others, her performance as CapCom, and her skill with the robot arm.

[15] NASA was still adjusting to female astronauts, and engineers had asked Ride to assist them in developing a "space makeup kit", assuming it would be something a woman would want on board.

She testified before the Congressional Space Caucus on the efficacy of the robot arm, and addressed the National Press Club, but declined to appear with Bob Hope, whom she regarded as sexist.

Sullivan performed an EVA with fellow TFNG mission specialist David Leestma, in which they showed that a satellite could be refueled in orbit.

This mission was scheduled to be flown no later than July 15, 1986, and was to deploy the Intelsat VI-1 and INSAT 1-C communications satellites and carry the Materials Science Lab-4.

[29] The crew was subsequently switched to STS-61-M, a Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TRDS) deployment mission scheduled to be flown in July 1986.

On January 7, 1986, Ride provided a glowing reference for her friend (and eventual biographer) Lynn Sherr for NASA's Journalist in Space Project.

After her death in 2012, Major General Donald J. Kutyna revealed that she had discreetly provided him with key information about O-rings, namely, that they become stiff at low temperatures, that eventually led to identification of the cause of the explosion.

In October 1986, she published a children's book, To Space and Back, which she co-wrote with Sue Okie, her high school and Swarthmore friend.

[1][2]: 221–228 In May 1987, Ride announced that she was leaving NASA to take up a two-year fellowship at the Stanford University Center for International Security and Arms Control (CISAC), commencing on August 15, 1987.

Ride researched means by which nuclear warheads could be counted and verified from space, but the impending end of the Cold War made this a much less pressing issue.

[40] From the mid-1990s until her death, Ride led two public-outreach programs for NASA—the ISS EarthKAM and GRAIL MoonKAM projects, in cooperation with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and UCSD.

[41][42] Ride bought a house in La Jolla, California, and O'Shaughnessy moved in after taking up a teaching position at San Diego Mesa College.

Due to the experience at CISAC, Clinton appointed her to a PCAST panel chaired by John Holdren to assess the risk of fissile materials being stolen in Russia and ending up in the hands of terrorists.

[2]: 257–260  She then became the president and CEO of Sally Ride Science, a company she co-founded with O'Shaughnessy, who served as the chief executive officer and chair of the board.

She served on the board of the National Math and Science Initiative in 2007 and the Educate to Innovate initiative in 2009, and was a member of the Review of United States Human Space Flight Plans Committee, which conducted an independent review of American space policy requested by the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) on May 7, 2009.

[2]: 285–287 [55] When Ride delivered a speech at the National Science Teachers Association Conference in San Francisco on March 10, 2011, O'Shaughnessy and a friend noted that she looked ill.

On December 17, 2012, the two GRAIL probes, Ebb and Flow, were directed to complete their mission by crashing on an unnamed lunar mountain near the crater Goldschmidt.

That day, President Barack Obama announced that Ride would receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States.

[80] Ride was inducted into the Legacy Walk, an outdoor public display in Chicago that celebrates LGBT history and people, in 2014.

Postal Service issued a first-class postage stamp honoring her in 2018,[85] and Ride appeared as one of the first two honorees of the American Women quarters series in March 2022.

[86][87] On 1 April 2022, a satellite named after Ride (ÑuSat 27 or "Sally", COSPAR 2022-033R) was launched into space as part of the Satellogic Aleph-1 constellation.