Sally Ride

A for astronaut, Sesame Street segment.

Sally Ride (1951-2012) was a physicist and astronaut for NASA. As a member of the STS-7 crew of Space Shuttle Challenger in June 1983, she became the first American woman to go into outer space.

Prior to her flight in space, Ride served as CAPCOM for the second and third Columbia missions, a role designated as the sole point of communication between a space-faring crew and mission control on the ground. In this capacity, she consulted on a series of morning wake-up calls for STS-2 featuring original material with the cast of Pigs in Space. The process of working on the scripts to fine-tune details allowed her to forge a friendship with writers Jerry and Susan Juhl. Following mission success, the relationship garnered the Juhls an invitation to Ride's launch on Challenger.^[1]

During the production of Fraggle Rock, the Juhls invited Ride to visit the set in Toronto. Susan Juhl recalls that Ride had been "fascinated by the Doozers, since the mechanisms used to make them move was very similar to the arm on the Shuttle."^[1] Mechanical designer Faz Fazakas also recalled in documentary footage from Fraggle Rock: Complete First Season that Ride practiced with the Doozer Vehicles technology prior to operating the shuttle's robotic arm.

The year after her first space flight, in January of 1984, Ride taped at least four segments^[2] for Sesame Street:

A for astronaut (EKA: Episode 2365)
Countdown to 10 with Grundgetta
"Getting to Sesame Street"
Sally Ride, Bob, and Maria talking to some kids about space travel. An excerpt from this segment is later seen in Episode 2059 when Maria tells Big Bird what type of career she might like to have had.