Today’s Google Doodle celebrates the life of Sally Ride, who became the first American woman to travel into space on June 18th, 1983. As Doodle’s animator Olivia Huynh explains, Ride was breaking barriers her whole life: working at NASA as a physicist and later becoming an educator, reaching millions of children — especially girls and minority students — to give them the message that they too could have a career in science.
Ride died on July 23rd, 2012 from pancreatic cancer, with today’s Doodle marking what would have been her 64th birthday.