Skip to content

Space

Life of first US woman in space Sally Ride makes a moving documentary

A new documentary sheds light on the extraordinary story of the US's first woman astronaut, Sally Ride, who defied all expectations in both her career and personal life

By Davide Abbatescianni

4 June 2025

Astronaut Sally Ride, mission specialist on STS-7, monitors control panels from the pilot's chair on the Flight Deck. Floating in front of her is a flight procedures notebook. (Credit: NASA) — Sally Ride during STS-7, NASA’s seventh Space Shuttle mission, in 1983
NASA

Sally
Cristina Costantini
Disney+ (from 17 June)

In 1983, Sally Ride made global headlines as the first US woman in space and the third woman after cosmonauts Valentina Tereshkova and Svetlana Savitskaya. A new documentary, Sally, directed by Cristina Costantini, sheds light on her extraordinary life. And it delves beyond the media spectacle to explore the complexities of her private life, including her 27-year-long relationship with Tam O’Shaughnessy, a children’s science writer.

Having premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival in January, the picture opens with a…

Sign up to our weekly newsletter

Receive a weekly dose of discovery in your inbox! We'll also keep you up to date with New Scientist events and special offers.

Sign up

Unlock this article

or

Existing subscribers

More from New Scientist

Explore the latest news, articles and features

The eye is first drawn, in this new NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope Picture of the Month, to the central mega-monster that is galaxy cluster Abell S1063. This behemoth collection of galaxies, lying 4.5 billion light-years from Earth in the constellation Grus (the Crane), dominates the scene. Looking more closely, this dense collection of heavy galaxies is surrounded by glowing streaks of light, and these warped arcs are the true object of scientists??? interest: faint galaxies from the Universe???s distant past. Abell S1063 was previously observed by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope???s Frontier Fields programme. It is a strong gravitational lens: the galaxy cluster is so massive that the light of distant galaxies aligned behind it is bent around it, creating the warped arcs that we see here. Like a glass lens, it focuses the light from these faraway galaxies. The resulting images, albeit distorted, are both bright and magnified ??? enough to be observed and studied. This was the aim of Hubble???s observations, using the galaxy cluster as a magnifying glass to investigate the early Universe. The new imagery from Webb???s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) takes this quest even further back in time. This image showcases an incredible forest of lensing arcs around Abell S1063, which reveal distorted background galaxies at a range of cosmic distances, along with a multitude of faint galaxies and previously unseen features. This image is what???s known as a deep field ??? a long exposure of a single area of the sky, collecting as much light as possible to draw out the most faint and distant galaxies that don???t appear in ordinary images. With 9 separate snapshots of different near-infrared wavelengths of light, totalling around 120 hours of observing time and aided by the magnifying effect of gravitational lensing, this is Webb???s deepest gaze on a single target to date. Focusing such observing power on a massive gravitational lens, like Abell S1063, therefore h

Space

Peer into the early universe as light bends around huge galaxy cluster

News

Our verdict on Ringworld by Larry Niven: Nice maths, shame about Teela

Comment

Our verdict on Ringworld by Larry Niven: Nice maths, shame about Teela

Culture

Technology

Trump's Golden Dome defence project could spur a space arms race

News

THE END 2024 de Joshua Oppenheimer Tim McInnerny Michael Shannon George MacKay Tilda Swinton Bronagh Gallagher Lennie James.

Earth

Joshua Oppenheimer's The End is a superb musical set in the end times

Culture

1

Dead Sea Scrolls analysis may force rethink of ancient Jewish history

2

The bizarre story of a maths proof that is only true in Japan

3

Massaging the neck and face may help flush waste out of the brain

4

There’s growing evidence the big five mass extinctions never happened

5

Ambitious book on quantum physics still fails to be accessible

6

Quantum computers are on the edge of revealing new particle physics

7

Super-invasive termites could spread from Florida around the world

8

Can AI understand a flower without being able to touch or smell?

9

Is ADHD on the rise? No – but that answer doesn't tell the whole story

10

Colossal scientist now admits they haven’t really made dire wolves