The Museum of Flight, Seattle, WA, will mark the legacy of astronaut Sally Ride on June 27 with its annual Sally’s Day program, a day of activities focused on the contributions of women to spaceflight and aerospace. Scheduled from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., the event will feature presentations and activities included with regular museum admission and free for museum members. This year’s featured speaker is Sarah Knights, a longtime employee of Blue Origin who spent more than a decade with the company. During her tenure, she served as Astronaut Office Director for the New Shepard program, where she developed training procedures for the company’s first crewed flights and oversaw astronaut training operations. Knights now supports flight crew operations for Blue Origin’s lunar program, which is preparing NASA astronauts for future missions aboard the Blue Moon Mark 2 lunar lander.
Her presentation, titled Astronaut Training: Tears, Fears, and the Final Frontier, is scheduled for 1 p.m. During the program, Knights is expected to discuss her experiences working in commercial human spaceflight, the development of New Shepard’s astronaut training program, and efforts to accommodate a wider range of participants in spaceflight, including the first wheelchair user to travel into space. She will also discuss future training requirements for lunar missions.
Another part of the day’s program will be the Museum’s annual Spacesuit Design Challenge fashion show. Scheduled for 3 p.m., the event will feature the 20 finalists selected from this year’s competition. According to the museum, the 2026 Spacesuit Design Challenge drew inspiration from the flight attendant uniforms currently featured in the museum’s “Runway to Runway” exhibition. The top designs presented during Sally’s Day will also be featured at the museum’s Fashion in Flight event on November 7. You can click HERE to read more about the “Runway to Runway” event. Named in honor of Sally Ride, the first American woman to travel into space, Sally’s Day has become an annual event at the Museum of Flight recognizing the achievements of women in aerospace and space exploration. For more information and to support The Museum of Flight, click on this link: www.museumofflight.org.
