If you don’t know her name, Sally Ride is one of the most famous astronauts in history and one of the most important people in the history of NASA. An astronaut and physicist, Sally Ride joined NASA in 1978, and in 1983 became the first American woman – the third woman overall – to fly in space, after cosmonauts Valentina Tereshkova (1963) and Svetlana Savitskaya(1982). She was the youngest American astronaut to have flown in space, having done so at the age of 32. But, aside from being a successful scientist, Sally Ride is also an icon of the LGBT community. Despite her marriage to astronaut Steven Hawley during her spaceflight years, Ride was later in a long-term relationship with former tennis player Tam O’Shaughnessy and is known as the first astronaut known to have been LGBT.

Her story is truly fascinating from both a professional and a private standpoint, which is why it is great that the story will finally be told on the big screen, as Amazon Prime is making a series about Sally Ride, and we can confirm that the famous astronaut will be played by icon Kristen Stewart!

Amazon is working on the series, which is going to be titled The Challenger, and it will be produced by Kyra Sedgwick’s Big Swing Productions, alongside Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Partners. The series will be written and run by Maggie Cohn, best known for her work on prestigious series like American Crime Story and The Staircase.

The series will be based on Meredith Bagby’s book The New Guys, which chronicles the story of NASA’s legendary generation of 1978, the first generation of American astronauts that included women and minorities. This was a groundbreaking moment in the history of NASA that definitely deserves to be told on the screen.

While Sally Ride’s story won’t be the only one told in the series, it is going to take up a large part of the narrative for sure, as Ride was a pivotal scientist from that area and one of America’s most important astronauts. She broke boundaries both professionally and privately, which is why it will be great to see her story on the screen.

As for Stewart, this will be her first starring role in a television project, so we will see her in a new environment, which is absolutely great. No further information has been revealed as of the time of writing, but be sure to keep following us, as more updates are to be revealed in the upcoming months. We on Fiction Horizon are going to bring you all these updates, as we always do, so be sure to stick around!