Judith Resnik

Resnik was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor. She was also awarded the NASA Space Flight Medal for her first flight. Landmarks and buildings named for her include a dormitory at her alma mater, Carnegie Mellon University; Judith A. Resnik Elementary School in Gaithersburg, Maryland; Judith A. Resnik Community Learning Center (formerly Fairlawn Elementary) which she had attended was renamed in her honor in her hometown of Akron; and Judith A. Resnik Middle School, established in 2016, in San Antonio, Texas. A crater on the Moon was named after her, as was one on Venus, where all features are named after women. An asteroid, 3356 Resnik, was also named after her.

Julie Fulton portrayed Resnik in the 1990 made-for-TV movie Challenger.

Initially scheduled for January 24, 1986, the launch was delayed until January 28 by rain, high winds, a troublesome bolt on the Space Shuttle Challenger's hatch and freezing temperatures. Resnik's father and stepmother, and her brother and his family watched the launch from the VIP area, as did her Firestone High math teacher. Selleck declined her invitation to attend. Resnik carried a locket for her niece, a signet ring for her nephew and a cigarette lighter for Nahmi.

This is the only evidence that shows Onizuka and Resnik were alive after the cockpit separated from the vehicle. If the cabin had lost pressure, the air packs alone would not have sustained the crew during the two-minute descent. Resnik's remains were recovered from the crashed vehicle cockpit by Navy divers from the USS Preserver. They were cremated and buried in Arlington National Cemetery on May 20, 1986, commingled with those of her six Challenger crewmates.

A memorial to Resnik and the rest of the crew of Challenger was dedicated in Seabrook, Texas, where she lived while stationed at the Johnson Space Center. She is also commemorated on the Space Mirror Memorial at the Kennedy Space Center. The IEEE Judith A. Resnik Award was established in 1986 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and is presented annually to an individual or team in recognition of outstanding contributions to space engineering in areas of relevance to the IEEE. The Society of Women Engineers (SWE) awards the Resnik Challenger Medal annually to "a woman who has changed the space industry, has personally contributed innovative technology verified by flight experience ... and will be recognized through future decades as having created milestones in the development of space as a resource for all humankind." The Challenger Center was established in 1986 by the families of the Challenger crew, including Resnik's brother, Charles, in honor of the crew members. Its goal is to increase children's interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

On January 29, 1985, NASA announced that Resnik had been assigned to the crew of STS-51-L. The main objective of this mission was to launch TDRS-B, the second in a series of NASA Tracking and Data Relay Satellites. It would also carry the Spartan (Shuttle Pointed Autonomous Research Tool for Astronomy), which would use two ultraviolet spectrometers to study the tail of Comet Halley. Resnik was primarily responsible for the operation of the RMS and, with fellow astronaut Ronald McNair, would deploy and later retrieve the Spartan. The flight would also carry Christa McAuliffe, a teacher-observer selected as part of NASA's Teacher in Space Project. Resnik was part of the team of astronauts who flew to Washington, D.C., to speak to the 113 finalists, and provide them an insider's view of a Space Shuttle mission. They were taken to the National Air and Space Museum, where they viewed The Dream is Alive with its scenes of Resnik deploying a satellite and eating and sleeping in space. She told them that it was a shame that they could not all fly in space, but privately she disagreed with NASA's decision to send non-astronauts on the Space Shuttle. Resnik's assignment was tied to McAuliffe's; NASA wanted McAuliffe to fly with a veteran female astronaut.

At age 28, Resnik was selected by NASA as a mission specialist. She was part of NASA Astronaut Group 8, the first group to include women. While training on the astronaut program, she developed software and operating procedures for NASA missions. Her first space flight was the STS-41-D mission in August and September 1984, the twelfth Space Shuttle flight, and the maiden voyage of Discovery, where her duties included operating its robotic arm. Her second Shuttle mission was STS-51-L in January 1986 aboard Challenger. She died when it broke up shortly after liftoff and crashed into the ocean.

The STS-41-D mission's launch was delayed three times. The first attempt, on June 25, 1984, was aborted due to a failure of the backup computer. The following day, during the second attempt, the computer detected a fault in one of the Space Shuttle main engines, and shut them down four seconds before liftoff. This was the first time a NASA space mission had been aborted after starting the engines since Gemini 6 in 1965. Discovery had to be taken back to the Vehicle Assembly Building, where the faulty engine was replaced. A further launch attempt was made on August 29, but was again delayed for a day due to a software issue. Finally, on August 30, Discovery lifted off for the first time, and was in orbit eight minutes later. Resnik invited her family to watch the launch from the VIP viewing area. This included her father, brother, Oldak and Nahmi. Her mother was also in attendance, to avoid bad publicity.

In February 1983, Resnik was assigned to the crew of STS-41-D, the twelfth Space Shuttle flight, the maiden voyage of the Space Shuttle Discovery, along with Henry Hartsfield, Michael Coats, Steven Hawley and Mike Mullane. During a visit to a contractor's factory, Resnik whispered to Mullane: "there are no maidens on this flight". She was the center of attention on such visits, and one contractor engineer became a stalker, sending her unwelcome letters, poems and gifts. Eventually, after he appeared in the office, he had to be dealt with by NASA security. After Hawley and Mullane had a fawning encounter with actor Bo Derek, who was working on the film Tarzan, the Ape Man, Resnik started calling Mullane "Tarzan" and Hawley "Cheetah"; when the office secretaries heard about this, they began referring to the STS-41-D crew as the "zoo crew". Resnik was a fan of the actor Tom Selleck, and had a coffee cup that said: "Excuse No. 1: I'm Saving Myself for Tom Selleck." Her crewmates hid a poster of Tom Selleck behind the bathroom curtain on Discovery.

In January 1978, at age 28, Resnik was selected as a mission specialist with NASA Astronaut Group 8, one of twenty-nine men and six women selected out of 8,029 applicants in the first NASA astronaut selection that included women. This involved taking a pay cut, as her new salary was considerably less than what she was being paid at Xerox. Her fellow astronaut candidates nicknamed her "JR". She dated some of them. She trained intensely and with great determination, focusing particularly on her physical fitness. She piloted the Northrop T-38 Talon, an aircraft used by NASA astronauts for transportation and training. Astronaut Jerome Apt described her as "an excellent pilot". Asked about Resnik, fellow astronaut Rhea Seddon said: "I thought she was really really bright, obviously a very beautiful person, flirtatious, funny. She was just a live wire. We would do the happy hours, or we'd go on these NASA trips, and Judy was just a star attraction."

While working on her doctorate, Resnik switched jobs in 1974, and went to work as a research fellow in biomedical engineering at the Laboratory of Neurophysiology at the National Institutes of Health. As a biomedical engineer, Resnik researched the physiology of visual systems. In 1977 she earned her PhD in electrical engineering with honors at the University of Maryland, writing her dissertation on "Bleaching kinetics of visual pigments". Her research involved the effects of electrical currents on the retina. An academic paper co-written by her concerning the biomedical engineering of optometry ("A novel rapid scanning microspectrophotometer and its use in measuring rhodopsin photoproduct pathways and kinetics in frog retinas") was published in the Journal of the Optical Society of America in 1978.

After her divorce from Oldak, Resnik reconnected with Nahmi, who was now a commercial airline pilot. When he heard that the National Air and Space Administration (NASA) was recruiting women to become astronauts, he encouraged her to apply. They read Carrying the Fire, the 1974 book by Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins, and she met with him in his office at the National Air and Space Museum. She also met with another former astronaut, John Glenn, who was now a United States senator from her home state of Ohio. Nahmi convinced her to obtain a private pilot's license to bolster her credentials. Resnik qualified as a pilot in 1977, while completing her Ph.D., having achieved near-perfect scores in her flying exams (two 100s and a 98). When she received a promotion at RCA and again when she completed her doctorate, he suggested she send NASA a telegram informing them.

At age 17, Resnik entered Carnegie Institute of Technology, where she joined the Alpha Epsilon Phi sorority. She began college intending to become a math major, but in her second year, after attending electrical engineering lectures with her boyfriend Michael Oldak, she developed a passion for the subject. She was one of three female students in electrical engineering. She was a gourmet cook and a navigator in sports car rallies, in which she took part many times with Oldak in his Triumph TR6. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University (as it now was) in 1970. She became a member of Tau Beta Pi and Eta Kappa Nu honor societies.

Resnik married Oldak on July 14, 1970. Her mother attended the wedding; two sets of invitations were sent out, one describing her as her father's daughter, and the other as her mother's. Upon graduation from Carnegie Mellon, Resnik and Oldak moved to Moorestown, New Jersey, where they both worked for RCA. She was a design engineer on missile and radar projects and won the Graduate Study Program Award. She performed circuit design for the missile and surface radar division. While at RCA, she worked for the Navy building custom integrated circuitry for the phased-array radar control systems and developed electronics and software for NASA's sounding rocket and telemetry systems programs. An academic paper she wrote on special purpose integrated circuitry caught the attention of NASA during this time. She registered for master's degree evening courses at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1971, Oldak was accepted into Georgetown University Law Center, and they moved to Washington, D.C. Resnik continued to work for RCA, transferring to its office in Springfield, Virginia, and she continued pursuing her master's degree at the University of Maryland. She then entered a doctoral program. Resnik and Oldak divorced in 1975—he wanted children and she did not—but they remained in contact and on good terms.

Resnik was noticed for her intellectual ability while still in kindergarten, and she entered elementary school a year early. She attended Fairlawn Elementary School, Simon Perkins Junior High School, and Harvey S. Firestone High School. She was an outstanding student, excelling in mathematics, languages and piano. She played classical piano, and at one point considered a career as a concert pianist. Before college, she attained a perfect score on her SAT exam, the only woman in the country to do so that year and only the sixteenth woman in US history. She graduated from Firestone in 1966 as valedictorian and runner-up homecoming queen.

Judith Arlene Resnik (April 5, 1949 – January 28, 1986) was an American electrical engineer, software engineer, biomedical engineer, pilot and NASA astronaut who died in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. She was the fourth woman, the second American woman and the first Jewish woman of any nationality to fly in space, logging 145 hours in orbit.

Judith Arlene Resnik was born in Akron, Ohio, on April 5, 1949, the daughter of Marvin Resnik, an optometrist, and his wife Sarah (née Polensky), a legal secretary. She had a brother, Charles, who was four years younger. Her father was the son of a rabbi, and he had been born in Preluke in Ukraine. His family had emigrated to Mandatory Palestine in the 1920s, and then to the United States after the 1929 Hebron massacre. He was fluent in eight languages and served in the U.S. Army during World War II in military intelligence, conducting prisoner of war interrogations and aerial reconnaissance in the Pacific Theater and the subsequent occupation of Japan. Resnik grew up in an observant Jewish home, studying at Hebrew school at Beth El Synagogue in Akron and celebrating her Bat Mitzvah in 1962. The Bat Mitzvah was not common at this time.