Former National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA) astronaut and first woman in space Sally Ride is coming to Iowa State.

Ride will present a lecture titled “The Future of the U.S. Space Program” on Saturday at 8 p.m. at Stephens Auditorium.

The lecture is free and open to the public. A book-signing will follow the lecture.

Kim Tholen, member of the Society for Women Engineers and senior in mechanical engineering, said Ride will talk about her missions in space, discuss her work on NASA committees and show video footage and slides of her expeditions.

“[The lecture will] be on how she was a pioneer of women, and what she had to overcome to get where she is,” Tholen said.

Ride’s visit to ISU was the result of a written request by the Society for Women Engineers last September.

“We’ve worked on it for over a year, and we’re really excited to get such a great speaker and role model for women,” Tholen said. “We’re really honored that she is going to speak at Iowa State.”

Ride also will participate in a program targeted for children called Shoot for the Stars from 2 to 5:30 p.m. on Saturday.

Tholen said the program will include hands-on activities to “get kids introduced to engineering.”

“Everyone is very excited about her coming,” said Pat Miller, director of the Lectures Program. “There is strong interest in science on campus, and who better to have speak than Sally Ride?”

Ride, who is originally from Los Angeles, has been on two missions of the Challenger space shuttle. During those missions in 1983 and 1984, the crew deployed satellites and conducted research.

After being assigned a space mission that was canceled due to the 1986 Challenger explosion, Ride worked on part of the Presidential Commission and investigated the accident for six months.

She was then assigned to NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., where she created NASA’s Office of Exploration.

Ride also is a member of the President’s Committee of Advisers on Science and Technology and the author of several books, including “An Adventure to the Edge of the Solar System,” “The Third Planet: Exploring the Earth from Space” and a children’s book titled “To Space and Back.”

She is currently a physics professor at the University of California, San Diego.