Dr. Tam O’Shaughnessy, ship’s sponsor for the Auxiliary General Oceanographic Research (AGOR) research vessel (R/V) Sally Ride (AGOR 28), broke a bottle across the bow during a christening ceremony at Dakota Creek Industries, Inc., shipyard.
"For the United States of America, I christen thee 'Sally Ride,'" O'Shaughnessy stated just before striking the bow. "May God bless this ship and all who sail in her."
Joining O'Shaughnessy at the event were Bear Ride, the astronaut's sister, and Kathryn Sullivan, the first American woman to conduct a spacewalk, who today serves as the undersecretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) administrator.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and the chief of naval research, Rear Adm. Matthew Klunder, were also present for the ceremony.
Like its namesake, the R/V Sally Ride has blazed a new path for women as the country's first academic research vessel to be named for a female scientist and explorer.
"For decades to come, the men and women who will man this ship will look past the horizon, beyond man-made boundaries, searching, learning, and honoring the pioneer [it] is named after – the great Sally Ride," Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus said in a statement.
Mabus named the R/V Sally Ride to honor the memory of Sally Ride, a scientist, innovator and educator. Ride was the first American woman and the youngest person in space. She later served as director of NASA's Office of Exploration as well as the California Space Institute at University of California San Diego. "Sally Ride's career will inspire generations to come," said Mabus. "I named R/V Sally Ride to honor a great researcher, but also to encourage generations of students to continue exploring, discovering, and reaching for the stars."
Ride, who died in 2012, became famous for launching with the STS-7 crew on space shuttle Challenger in 1983. The first U.S. female astronaut to fly into space, she was only the third woman worldwide to orbit the Earth, following two Soviet-era cosmonauts, Valentina Tereshkova in 1963 and Svetlana Savitskaya in 1982.
R/Vs Sally Ride and Neil Armstrong, also built at Dakota Creek, are modern research vessels based on a commercial design, capable of integrated, interdisciplinary, general purpose oceanographic research in coastal and deep ocean areas. Both ships are being constructed by Dakota Creek Industries Inc.
The Neil Armstrong-class features a modern suite of oceanographic equipment, state of the art acoustic equipment capable of mapping the deepest parts of the oceans, advanced over-the-side handling gear to deploy and retrieve scientific instruments, emissions controls for stack gasses, and new information technology tools both for monitoring shipboard systems and for communicating with land-based sites worldwide. Enhanced modular onboard laboratories and extensive science payload capacity will provide the ships with the flexibility to meet a wide variety of oceanographic research challenges in the coming decades.
The Navy currently owns six of the nation’s largest oceanographic research ships, which support critical naval research in forward deployed areas of the world’s oceans, as well as the needs of other federal agencies. A major segment of the U.S. research fleet is now approaching the end of its service life and is in need of replacement.
R/V Sally Ride will be U.S. flagged, manned by a commercial crew, and will be operated by Scripps Institution of Oceanography under a charter-party agreement with the Office of Naval Research.