Ride showed great early promise as a tennis player, but she eventually gave up her plans to play professionally and attended Stanford University, where she earned bachelor's degrees in English and physics (1973). In 1978, as a doctoral candidate and teaching assistant in laser physics at Stanford, she was selected by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as one of six women astronaut candidates. She received a Ph.D. in astrophysics and began her training and evaluation courses that same year. In August 1979 she completed her NASA training, obtained a pilot's license, and became eligible for assignment as a U.S. space shuttle mission specialist. On June 18, 1983, she became the first American woman in space while rocketing into orbit aboard the shuttle orbiter Challenger. The shuttle mission lasted six days, during which time she helped deploy two communications satellites and carry out a variety of experiments. She served on a second space mission aboard Challenger in October 1984; the crew included another woman, Ride's childhood friend Kathryn Sullivan, who became the first American woman to walk in space. Ride was training for a third shuttle mission when the Challenger exploded after launch in January 1986, a catastrophe that caused NASA to suspend shuttle flights for more than two years. Ride served on the presidential commission appointed to investigate the accident, and she repeated that role as a member of the commission that investigated the in-flight breakup of the orbiter Columbia in February 2003.

Ride married fellow astronaut Steven Hawley in 1982; they divorced five years later. Ride resigned from NASA in 1987, and in 1989 she became a professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego, and director of its California Space Institute (until 1996). In 1999–2000 she held executive positions with Space.com, a Web site presenting space, astronomy, and technology content. From the 1990s Ride initiated or headed a number of programs and organizations devoted to fostering science in education, particularly to providing support for schoolgirls interested in science, mathematics, or technology. She also wrote or collaborated on several children's books about space exploration and her personal experiences as an astronaut.