Sally Ride, the first US woman to travel into space, has died aged 61, 17 months after she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, her foundation says, according to BBC News.


"Sally's historic flight into space captured the nation's imagination and made her a household name," Sally Ride Science said in a statement.


She blasted off in the US space shuttle Challenger in June 1983.


Ride was not the first woman in space - that was Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova in June 1963.
Since her first mission in 1983, more than 45 women from the US and other countries have flown in space, including two as shuttle commander.


Ride died on Monday in La Jolla, California.


Once an aspiring tennis player, she went on to earn no fewer than four university degrees including a doctorate in physics.


In a statement, US President Barack Obama said he was "deeply saddened" to hear about her death.


"As the first American woman to travel into space, Sally was a national hero and a powerful role model," he said in a statement.
Ride was born and grew up in Los Angeles, California, attending Stanford University for master's and doctorate degrees in physics.


According to her foundation, Ride applied to Nasa after seeing an ad in the Stanford student newspaper, calling for scientists and engineers, including women to apply to the astronaut corps.


She joined Nasa in 1978 - one of 35 people selected as astronauts from a field of more than 8,000 who applied.


Ride went on her first space shuttle mission on board the Challenger in 1983.


As well as being the first American woman in space, she was also - at the age of 32 - the youngest person in America at the time to go into orbit.