Kristen Stewart to star as astronaut Sally Ride – the first American woman in space – in TV series debut The Challenger

Kristen Stewart will make her TV series debut as astronaut Sally Ride in The Challenger.

The 34-year-old actress, who lashed out at Hollywood for what she called its “fake” support for female directors, will take on the role of Ride, the first American woman to travel to space, per Deadline.

Ride, who died of pancreatic cancer in 2012, joined NASA in 1978 as part of a diverse class of astronauts that included the first Black and Asian American astronauts and a married couple.

The Los Angeles native flew her first Space Shuttle mission in 1983 aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger.

Three years later, the Challenger exploded shortly after takeoff on a cold morning in Cape Canaveral, Florida on January 28, 1986.

Ride became the first American woman to travel into space in 1983

The diverse crew included Ride’s classmates Ronald McNair, Judith Resnik and Ellison Onizuka, along with Michael J. Smith, Gregory Jarvis, Francis R. “Dick” Scobee and teacher Christa McAuliffe.

Ride was the only astronaut to participate in the Rogers Commission.

The plot of the series looks not only at the groundbreaking class of 1978, but also at the investigation of the 1986 Challenger tragedy.

The show is based on the book The New Guys by Meredith E Bagby.

Bagby, along with Kyra Sedgwick and Valerie Stadler, founded their company Big Swing Productions to create the series.

In an interview with Deadline, Sedgewick said it was a project she had been working on for years.

“This is something we’ve been working on at Big Swing since 2017, me, Meredith and Valerie, about this new class of astronauts that were recruited by NASA in the early 1970s,” she told the outlet.

Part of the series will focus on the 1986 Challenger disaster that killed teacher Christa McAuliffe and astronauts Gregory Jarvis, Judith Resnik, Francis R. “Dick” Scobee Ronald McNair, Michael J. Smith and Ellison Onizuka came.

“Sally Ride was one of them, and the focus is on this newly recruited wild, feral group of astronauts who were all very diverse,” the Emmy winner explained.

“And then on an Oppenheimer circuit it also tells the story of the Rogers Commission that investigated the Challenger disaster in which Ride took part.”

Bagby, who was obsessed with space and the shuttle program during her childhood in Florida, saw the Challenger explode on that fateful day.

“Meredith has had hundreds of hours of interviews with the members of that class, and we have relationships with all those living astronauts and they will be part of our brain trust on the show,” she said.

The Closer star revealed that it was Stadler’s “dream to have Kristen Stewart” in the role of Ride.

“After more than a year of trying to backchannel this book to Kristen, she read it and fell in love,” Sedgwick said.

Kyra Sedgwick co-developed the series with The New Guys author Meredith E Bagby and writer and producer Valerie Stadler through their production company Big Swing (pictured in New York in May)

Stewart, who has been open about her sexuality since publicly coming out as a lesbian when she hosted Saturday Night Live in 2017, may have to make a cameo appearance.

Ride was also gay, making her the first member of the LGBTQ+ community to travel to space, but her sexuality was not publicly acknowledged until after her death.

The obituary written by Ride and her longtime companion Tam O’Shaughnessy and the Sally Ride Science issue called O’Shaughnessy Ride’s “partner of 27 years.”

Sedgwick, who is producing the series with Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Partners and with Stewart’s Nevermind production label, hopes to have the show ready in time to mark the 50th anniversary of the Challenger tragedy.