Who was the first American woman to fly into space in 1983?

The first American woman to fly into space in 1983 was Sally Ride.

Ride reached space aboard NASA’s Space Shuttle Challenger on the STS-7 mission, launched from Kennedy Space Center on June 18, 1983. At age 32, she became the first American woman in space and the third woman overall, following Soviet cosmonauts Valentina Tereshkova and Svetlana Savitskaya. The mission lasted just over six days and landed at Edwards Air Force Base on June 24.

A physicist with degrees from Stanford University, Ride joined NASA in 1978 as part of Astronaut Group 8, the agency’s first astronaut class to include women. During STS-7, she operated the shuttle’s robotic arm and helped deploy and retrieve the SPAS-1 satellite. She flew again on STS-41-G in 1984, then left NASA in 1987 and became an advocate for science education. Mae Jemison became the first African American woman in space in 1992; Eileen Collins was the first woman to command a space shuttle.