As a kid, I flew on the space shuttle with astronaut Sally Ride many times. That’s because every night, my dad would pull out a book to read to my sister and me, and among our favorites was To Space and Back. In it, Sally describes her life aboard the space shuttle Challenger, and how living and working in microgravity is a bit trickier than you might expect.

Over and over and over again, we asked Dad to read us Sally’s book, and I would drift to sleep dreaming about riding a rocket into Earth orbit, visiting the moon and Mars, and living among the stars.

When Ride died in 2012, I revisited To Space and Back and found a poignant surprise: She