This Soviet commemorative coin, owned by Dr. Sally K. Ride, was minted to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Valentina Tereshkova's space flight. Tereshkova became the first woman in space when she flew aboard Vostok 6 in 1963. The Soviet Union did not send another woman into space until nineteen years later when Svetlana Savitskaya joined the crew of Soyuz T-7. The United States followed one year later, when, in 1983, Ride flew aboard STS-7 and became the first American woman in space.

Ride's second and last space mission was STS-41G in 1984. A physicist with a Ph.D., she joined the astronaut corps in 1978 as a part of the first class of astronauts recruited specifically for the Space Shuttle Program. Viewed as a leader in the NASA community, she served on the Rogers Commission after the Challenger disaster in 1986 as well as the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) in 2003. She also led the task force that produced a visionary strategic planning report in 1987 titled, “NASA Leadership and America’s Future in Space,” but known popularly as the Ride Report.

After she retired from NASA in 1987, Dr. Ride taught first at Stanford and later at the University of California, San Diego. Until her death in 2012, she was president and CEO of Sally Ride Science, a company that promoted science education.

Dr. Ride’s partner, Dr. Tam O’Shaughnessy, donated the coin to the Museum in 2013.