Kristen Stewart to play pioneering astronaut Sally Ride in streaming series

Actress and activist Kristen Stewart is starring in and co-producing The Challenger, a limited series about the first American female astronaut, and the first member of the LGBT community to go to space, Sally Ride.

Deadline broke the news about the project, which is being executive produced by Kyra Sedgwick and Steven Spielberg‘s Amblin Partners. The series is based on Meredith E. Bagby‘s bestseller The New Guys, about the first diverse class of astronauts following the Space Race years.

Ride, who was also a brilliant physicist, took her historic ride on the space shuttle in 1983. Three years later, when Challenger exploded, she was the only astronaut to sit on the Rogers Commission, which looked into the disaster that killed all seven aboard, including civilian astronaut Christa McAuliffe.

Ride died of cancer in 2012 at age 61.

The trade says Prime Video is close to securing a deal to distribute the limited series, which Sedgwick told Deadline she’s been working to bring to life since 2017.

She added, “The focus is this newly recruited wild, feral group of astronauts who were all very diverse” and pivots to “an Oppenheimer track” about the Rogers Commission.

Sedgwick said her production company partner Valerie Stadler “had this dream of having Kristen Stewart, and after more than a year of trying to get Kristen this book through back channeling, she read it and she fell in love.”