DECEMBER 17 - JUDITH RESNIKJudith Resnik was recruited into the astronaut program January 1978 by ac

DECEMBER 17 - JUDITH RESNIKJudith Resnik was recruited into the astronaut program January 1978 by actress Nichelle Nichols, who was working as a recruiter for NASA. Her first space flight was as a mission specialist on the maiden voyage of Discovery, from August to September 1984. She was likewise a mission specialist aboard Challenger for STS-51-L. She was the first American Jewish astronaut to go into space, the first Jewish woman, and at the time only the second Jewish person to go to space (after Boris Volynov of the Soviet Union).For people accustomed to seeing images of astronauts in space, Resnik’s first space mission still caused some notoriety. Not only was she one of the first women in space, but in weightlessness, she displayed a halo of flowing locks, a startling sight to many viewers who were accustomed to seeing closely cropped men. During the flight, she was acclaimed for her weightless acrobatics and a playful sense of humor, once holding a sign reading “Hi Dad” up to the camera, and displaying a sticker on her flight locker that advertised her crush on actor Tom Selleck.Following the Challenger disaster, examination of the recovered vehicle cockpit revealed that three of the crew members’ Personal Egress Air Packs were activated: those of Resnik, mission specialist Ellison Onizuka, and pilot Michael J. Smith. The location of Smith’s activation switch, on the back side of his seat, means that either Resnik or Onizuka could have activated it for him. This is the only evidence available from the disaster that shows Onizuka and Resnik were alive after the cockpit separated from the vehicle. If the cabin had lost pressure, the packs alone would not have sustained the crew during the two-minute descent.Resnik has been awarded multiple posthumous honors, and has been honored with landmarks and buildings being named for her, including a lunar crater Resnik, located within the Apollo impact basin on the far side of the Moon. A dormitory at her alma mater, Carnegie Mellon, and the main engineering lecture hall at the University of Maryland are named for her. A memorial to her and the rest of the crew crew of Challenger has been dedicated in Seabrook, Texas, where she lived while stationed at the Johnson Space Center.Text for today’s post was taken from Wikipedia. Please consider donating a few minutes to make a submission to Celebrate Women before the year is over. -- source link

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