posted 05-26-2015 12:02 AM               

Google 'Doodle' celebrates Sally Ride, the first American woman in space

Google has paid tribute to America's first woman in space with a series of five animated "Doodles" appearing on its website.

The whimsical scenes, displayed one at a time, randomly, with each refresh of the page, are timed to celebrate what would have been Sally Ride's birthday. Born on May 26, 1951, Ride died almost three years ago on July 23, 2012, from pancreatic cancer.

"Sally Ride, who would have been 64 today, captured the nation's imagination as a symbol of the ability of women to break barriers," wrote Tam O'Shaughnessy, CEO of Sally Ride Science and Ride's life partner, in a guest essay that accompanies the Doodles on Google's website.

posted 05-26-2015 07:08 AM               

I was really excited to get this doodle because I’m really attached to NASA. I grew up in Houston near Johnson Space Center. Growing up in that area I was around engineers and astronauts. She was role model for people there, even outside of the NASA community.

Then, when I was doing research for a film in school, I ended up reading about astronauts and learning more about her. The more I read, the more incredible she sounded. She was the first woman astronaut and the youngest astronaut and the first out LBGT astronaut. It was very inspiring to read that — you could imagine that it could have been way longer before we had a female astronaut. It was one of those things that stick with you.