Judith Resnik
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Judith Arlene Resnik 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.
Official portrait, 1978
Resnik in June 1979
Resnik poses with the rest of the Space Shuttle Discovery crew during the STS-41-D mission.
Resnik on the middeck of Space Shuttle Discovery during the STS-41-D mission, with an "I love Tom Selleck" sticker on her locker. A handwritten card reads: "Hi Dad".
Space Shuttle Challenger disaster
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On January 28, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, killing all seven crew members aboard. The spacecraft disintegrated 46,000 feet (14 km) above the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 11:39 a.m. EST. It was the first fatal accident involving an American spacecraft while in flight.
Challenger's solid rocket boosters fly uncontrollably after the breakup of the external tank separated them from the shuttle stack. The remains of the orbiter and tank leave thin white contrails as they fall toward the Atlantic Ocean.
Space Shuttle Challenger – assembled for launch along with the ET and two SRBs – atop a crawler-transporter en route to the launch pad about one month before the disaster
Cross-sectional diagram of the original SRB field joint. The top end of the lower rocket segment has a deep U-shaped cavity, or clevis, along its circumference. The bottom end of the top segment extends to form a tang that fits snugly into the clevis of the bottom segment. Two parallel grooves near the top of the clevis inner branch hold ~20 foot (6 meter) diameter O-rings that seal the gap between the tang and the clevis, keeping hot gases out.
STS-51-L crew: (back) Onizuka, McAuliffe, Jarvis, Resnik; (front) Smith, Scobee, McNair.