Resnik Credit - www.spacefacts.de Media Gallery

Personal: Female, divorced. Born in Akron, Ohio, USA. Challenger explosion. PhD

Astronaut Career

Astronaut Group: NASA Group 8 - 1978. Deceased Entered space service: 16 January 1978. Left space service: 1986. Number of Flights: 2.00. Total Time: 6.04 days.

Resnik was raised as a Jewish princess, but then revolted against her parents and became an electrical engineer. She was smart, hardworking, dependable, and beautiful, with a huge mane of black hair and a deep tan. The enormous halo of hair, floating in zero-G, made for some memorable pictures from her first shuttle mission. It also snagged in the works of the IMAX camera aboard the mission, having to be cut out with scissors. Luckily the camera could be put back into operation, and the commercially-funded footage could be shot without too great a loss. She was briefly married and divorced before becoming an astronaut.

At one point she was stalked by a NASA subcontractor employee. Repeated complaints to NASA management and the contractor were of no avail until the stalker actually showed up at her desk in Houston, at which point action was finally taken.

Resnik was nicknamed Jane by Mullane after she dubbed Hawley and Mullane Cheetah and Tarzan after their fawning encounter with Bo Derek during the filming of Tarzan the Ape Man. All of the astronauts assumed she and Mullane were having an affair, but he completely denied this in his frank autobiography.Official NASA Biography:

Judith A. Resnik was born on April 5, 1949 at Akron, Ohio, the daughter of Dr. Marvin Resnik, a respected Akron optometrist, and Sarah Resnik. Brought up in the Jewish religion, Resnik was educated in public schools before attending Carnegie-Mellon University, where she received a B.S. in electrical engineering in 1970, and the University of Maryland, where she took at Ph.D. in the same field in 1977. Resnik worked in a variety of professional positions with the RCA corporation in the early 1970s and as a staff fellow with the Laboratory of Neurophysiology at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, between 1974 and 1977.

Selected as a NASA astronaut in January 1978, the first cadre containing women, Resnik underwent the training program for Shuttle mission specialists during the next year. Thereafter, she filled a number of positions within NASA at the Johnson Space Center, working on aspects of the Shuttle program. Resnik became the second American woman in orbit during the maiden flight of Discovery, STS-41-D, between August 30 and September 5, 1984. During this mission she helped to deploy three satellites into orbit; she was also involved in biomedical research during the mission. Afterward, she began intensive training for the STS-51- L mission on which she was killed.

• 30 August 1984 Flight: STS-41-D. Flight Up: STS-41-D. Flight Back: STS-41-D. Flight Time: 6.04 days.

• 28 January 1986 Flight: STS-51-L. Flight Up: STS-51-L. Flight Back: STS-51-L. Flight Time: 0.0008 days.

16 January 1978 - NASA Astronaut Training Group 8 selected.. The group was selected to provide pilot, engineer, and scientist astronauts for space shuttle flights. Recruit women and minorities to introduce diversity into the astronaut corps. Qualifications: Pilots: Bachelor's degree in engineering, biological science, physical science or mathematics. Advanced degree desirable. At least 1,000 flight-hours of pilot-in-command time. Flight test experience desirable. Excellent health. Vision minimum 20/50 uncorrected, correctable to 20/20 vision; maximum sitting blood pressure 140/90. Height between 163 and 193 cm.

Mission Specialists: Bachelor's degree in engineering, biological science, physical science or mathematics and minimum three years of related experience or an advanced degree. Vision minimum 20/150 uncorrected, correctable to 20/20. Maximum sitting blood pressure of 140/90. Height between 150 and 193 cm.. 8,079 applicants, of which half met the basic qualifications. 208 invited for physical tests and interviews. Of the 35 selected, six were women, three were male African-Americans, and one was a male Asian-American.

• NASA Astronaut Biographies, Johnson Space Center, NASA, 1995-present. Accessed at: http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/.