Short answers, pulled from the story.
Sally Ride was an American astronaut and physicist who, on the 18th of June, 1983, became the first American woman and the third woman overall to fly in space, aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger on mission STS-7. She was also the youngest American astronaut to have flown in space, at the age of 32, and is the first astronaut publicly known to have been LGBTQ.
Ride earned a Bachelor of Science in physics and a Bachelor of Arts in English literature from Stanford University in 1973, a Master of Science in physics in 1975, and a Doctor of Philosophy in physics in 1978. Her doctoral dissertation, supervised by Arthur B. C. Walker Jr., examined the interaction of X-rays with the interstellar medium.
Sally Ride flew in space twice. Her first flight was STS-7 in June 1983 and her second was STS-41-G in October 1984, both aboard Challenger. She spent a total of more than 343 hours in space across the two missions.
Ride served on the Rogers Commission and led its subcommittee on operations. She was the only Space Shuttle astronaut and the only current NASA employee on the commission. After her death, it was revealed that she had secretly provided Major General Donald J. Kutyna with key information about O-rings stiffening at low temperatures, which was ultimately identified as the cause of the explosion; to protect her, the information was passed to physicist Richard Feynman.
Tam O'Shaughnessy was a former Women's Tennis Association player who had known Ride since the junior tennis circuit. The two began a relationship in 1985 and were partners for 27 years. Ride had ensured O'Shaughnessy would inherit her estate in a will drawn up in 1992, and they registered their domestic partnership on the 15th of August, 2011. The relationship was publicly confirmed only when Ride's obituary named O'Shaughnessy as her partner following Ride's death on the 23rd of July, 2012.
Ride received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Space Society's von Braun Award, the Lindbergh Eagle, and the NASA Space Flight Medal twice. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame, the Astronaut Hall of Fame, and the National Aviation Hall of Fame. In March 2022, she appeared on the American Women quarters series, becoming the first known LGBTQ person on U.S. currency.