2022-S Sally Ride Proof Washington Quarter (American Women)

With a mintage of 863,886, the 2022-S clad proof Sally Ride quarter honors the physicist who became the first American woman in space in 1983. San Francisco's proof finish brings strong contrast to the shuttle window design, with Earth's curvature rendered in crisp frosted relief against the mirrored field. The deep polish of the background evokes the blackness of space beyond the shuttle window.

About Sally Ride

Ride was born May 26, 1951, in Los Angeles and grew up with twin passions for tennis and science. She ranked among the top junior players in Southern California before choosing physics over a professional sports career. At Stanford she earned bachelor's degrees in both physics and English, then stayed for her master's and doctoral work on X-ray interactions with interstellar matter. A newspaper ad in the Stanford Daily led her to apply to NASA in 1977, where she was selected with five other women in the agency's first gender-integrated astronaut class. Before flying, she worked as capsule communicator and contributed to the shuttle's robotic arm program. Her first flight aboard Challenger on June 18, 1983, lasted six days and included deploying two communications satellites. After the Challenger accident in 1986 cut short her training for a third flight, she served on the Rogers Commission and wrote a NASA report charting the agency's future direction. She spent her post-NASA years teaching physics at UC San Diego, directing the California Space Institute, and co-founding Sally Ride Science with Tam O'Shaughnessy. Ride died of pancreatic cancer at sixty-one on July 23, 2012. Her quarter made her the first known LGBTQ individual depicted on United States currency.