Google Honors Sally Ride, the First American Woman in Space, In Their Latest Doodle

Google has done a great job of honoring female pioneers in STEM careers in their daily doodles, and today provided them with another opportunity. Sally Ride was a physicist and astronaut who was also the first American woman in space, and today would have been her 64th birthday.

Ride became the first American woman in space in 1978, when she was 32. However, as this awesome animated Behind the Doodle video from the GoogleDoodles channel on YouTube—animation by Nate Swinehart and Google doodler Olivia Huynh—explains, she broke down barriers in many other ways, too:

And while the video doesn’t mention this, the fact that she was also a lesbian—which only became widely known after her death in 2012, because she was a very private person—is a huge deal in the barrier-breaking department, as the LGBTQ community has yet another awesome person to claim as one of their own! And the first American woman in space, no less!

There are five Google doodles celebrating Ride today, so make sure you refresh your page to see them all. My personal favorite is the one where a little girl comes up to an animated Sally Ride to shake her hand, and ends up floating toward the sky in a space suit.

Happy birthday, Ms. Ride, and thank you for providing so much inspiration to countless women and girls (and guys, too!) who dream of the stars.

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Teresa Jusino

Teresa Jusino (she/her) is a native New Yorker and a proud Puerto Rican, Jewish, bisexual woman with ADHD. She's been writing professionally since 2010 and was a former TMS assistant editor from 2015-18. Now, she's back as a contributing writer. When not writing about pop culture, she's writing screenplays and is the creator of your future favorite genre show. Teresa lives in L.A. with her brilliant wife. Her other great loves include: Star Trek, The Last of Us, anything by Brian K. Vaughan, and her Level 5 android Paladin named Lal.

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