2022 American Women Quarters Program,Sally Ride, D Mint

Own this American Women Quarters Program coin honoring Astronaut Sally Ride

This quarter was issued in 2022 as part of the first series of US coins to honor the achievements of women. The reverse design on this quarter features America’s first woman in space, Sally Ride.  It shows Ride in front of a window of the space sh...  more

Own this American Women Quarters Program coin honoring Astronaut Sally Ride

This quarter was issued in 2022 as part of the first series of US coins to honor the achievements of women. The reverse design on this quarter features America’s first woman in space, Sally Ride.  It shows Ride in front of a window of the space shuttle.  She is looking out on the Earth below.  This coin was minted at the Denver Mint.

About the American Women Quarters Program

The American Women Quarters Program is a multi-year tribute to women from diverse backgrounds, races, ethnicities, and parts of the US.  They were chosen for their contributions to the abolition of slavery, civil rights activism, roles in government, as well as expertise in science, the arts, humanities and much more.

From 2022 through 2025, five new coins were released each year.  Each coin features a distinctive reverse design honoring an American woman, along with her name, “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,” “E PLURIBUS UNUM,” and “QUARTER DOLLAR.”   The obverse side showcases a new design of George Washington. 

On June 18, 1983, Sally Ride became the first American woman in space.

She earned a PhD in physics from Stanford University in 1978.  The same year, the university ran an ad in the student newspaper looking for people to join the space program.  Ride was among the 8,000 people who applied.

Accepted to NASA in 1978, Ride started her career as the ground-based capsule communicator for the space shuttle as well as helping build the ship's robotic arm. Once it was announced that she would go into space aboard the Challenger mission STS-7, she received instant fame as America's first female astronaut to go to space.  Despite this major milestone, Ride faced questions at press conferences that included "Will the flight affect your reproductive organs?" and "Do you weep when things go wrong on the job?"  But Ride insisted she only saw herself as an astronaut.

On June 18, 1983, at 7:33 am, the STS-7 mission launched from the John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida.  In addition to Ride becoming the first American woman in space, she was also the youngest American in space at age 32.  The flight was also notable in that it was the largest crew in a single spacecraft up to that time (five).  During that mission, the crew deployed two communications satellites and staged pharmaceutical experiments.  Ride was the first woman to use the robotic arm in space and employed it to grab a satellite.

Ride made a second trip to space in 1984, again on the Challenger for STS-41-G.  That mission was the first to carry seven people and the first to carry two American women - Ride and Kathryn Sullivan.  Ride later underwent eight months of training for her third trip to space, but the Challenger disaster grounded all shuttles.  In her two missions, Ride spent over 343 hours in space.

Ride went on to take part in the investigations of the Challenger and Columbia disasters, making her the only person to participate in both.  She also founded NASA's Office of Exploration.  After her retirement from NASA in 1987, she became a professor of physics at the University of California and director of the California Space Institute.  Ride also devoted much of her time to encouraging children, especially young girls, to pursue the sciences, founding her own nonprofit organization dedicated to the cause.