U.S. MINT TO ISSUE COIN IN HONOR OF LATE ASTRONAUT SALLY RIDE IN 2022
Maya Angelou will also appear on quarter as part of new program
The United States Mint plans to issue a quarter-dollar coin that commemorates the accomplishments and contributions of the late Sally Ride, who became the first American woman to travel in space and later served on the UC San Diego faculty.
Ride and the late writer Maya Angelou will appear on separate coins as part of the new American Women Quarters Program, which is run by the Mint, the sole maker of legal-tender coinage in the U.S.
The Mint says it will annually issue up to five different reversedesign coins per year beginning in 2022. The honor is limited to people who are no longer alive.
As is now the case, the likeness of George Washington will appear on the obverse, or head, side of the quarter, and a design focused on each woman will be on the reverse side. The quarters will become circulating coinage.
Ride was a Los Angeles native who was chosen for astronaut training in 1978, when NASA selected women candidates for the first time.
She made history again in 1983 when she became the first woman to fly in space, going aloft in the space shuttle Challenger. Ride used the spacecraft’s robotic arm to help deploy two communications satellites. She flew a second mission on Challenger in 1984 and was training for a third in 1986 when the spacecraft exploded during take-off, killing seven astronauts.
Ride subsequently served on the Rogers Commission, the presidential panel that investigated the cause of the accident. She also did strategic planning for NASA, and left the agency in 1987. Two years later, she became a member of the physics faculty at UCSD.
In 2001, she co-founded Sally Ride Science, a La Jolla company that promotes science, technology, engineering and math programs among young people. Ride died of pancreatic cancer in 2012, at the age of 61. The company is now located at UCSD.
The U.S. Postal Service honored Ride’s life and legacy in 2018 by placing her image on a Forever stamp. She also has been honored by UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, which operates a research ship that bears Ride’s name.