Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, died Monday at age 61 of pancreatic cancer.

Ride was an astrophysics PhD from Stanford. She flew aboard Space Shuttle Challenger in June 1983 on the STS-7 mission.

In this video, produced by NASA for its 50th anniversary, she describes her historic flight.

Ride took her place in history 20 years after the Soviet textile worker Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman into space in June 1963 in what is described by the Los Angeles Times as a space-race PR stunt.