The Crew of the Challenger Space Shuttle
The Challenger shuttle crew, of seven
astronauts--including the specialties of pilot, aerospace engineers, and
scientists-- died tragically in the explosion of their spacecraft during
the launch of STS-51-L from the Kennedy Space Center about 11:40 a.m.,
EST, on January 28, 1986. The explosion occurred 73 seconds into the
flight as a result of a leak in one of two Solid Rocket Boosters that
ignited the main liquid fuel tank. The crewmembers of the Challenger
represented a cross-section of the American population in terms of race,
gender, geography, background, and religion. The explosion became one of
the most significant events of the 1980s, as billions around the world saw
the accident on television and empathized with any one of the several
crewmembers killed.
The spacecraft commander was Francis R. (Dick)
Scobee, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Francis W. Scobee. He was born on May 19,
1939, in Cle Elum, Washington, and graduated from the public high school
in Auburn, Washington, in 1957. He then enlisted in the U.S. Air Force,
training as a reciprocating engine mechanic but longing to fly. He took
night courses and in 1965 completed a B.S. degree in Aerospace Engineering
from the University of Arizona. This made it possible for Scobee to
receive an officer's commission and enter the Air Force pilot training
program. He received his pilot's wings in 1966 and began a series of
flying assignments with the Air Force, including a combat tour in Vietnam.
Scobee also married June Kent of San Antonio, Texas, and they had two
children, Kathie R. and Richard W., in the early 1960s. He attended the
USAF Aerospace Research Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base,
California, in 1972 and thereafter was involved in several test programs.
As an Air Force test pilot Scobee flew more than 45 types of aircraft,
logging more than 6,500 hours of flight time.
In 1978 Scobee entered NASA's astronaut corps and
was the pilot of STS-41-C, the fifth orbital flight of the Challenger
spacecraft, launching from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on April 6,
1984. During this seven-day mission the crew successfully retrieved and
repaired the ailing Solar Maximum Satellite and returned it to orbit. This
was an enormously important mission, because it demonstrated the
capability that NASA had long said existed with the Space Shuttle to
repair satellites in orbit.
The pilot for the fatal 1986 Challenger
mission was Michael J. Smith, born on April 30, 1945 in Beaufort, North
Carolina. At the time of the Challenger accident a commander in the
U.S. Navy, Smith had been educated at the U.S. Naval Academy, class of
1967, and received an M.S. in Aeronautical Engineering from the Naval
Postgraduate School in 1968. From there he underwent aviator training at
Kingsville, Texas, and received his wings in May 1969. After a tour as an
instructor at the Navy's Advanced Jet Training Command between 1969 and
1971, Smith flew A- 6 "Intruders" from the USS Kitty Hawk in
Southeast Asia. Later he worked as a test pilot for the Navy, flying 28
different types of aircraft and logging more than 4,300 hours of flying
time. Smith was selected as a NASA astronaut in May 1980, and a year
later, after completing further training, he received an assignment as a
Space Shuttle pilot, the position he occupied aboard Challenger.
This mission was his first space flight.
Judith A. Resnik was one of three mission
specialists on Challenger. 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.
Ronald E. McNair was the second of three mission specialists aboard
Challenger. Born on October 21, 1950 in Lake City, South Carolina,
McNair was the son of Carl C. McNair, Sr., and Pearl M. McNair. He
achieved early success in the segregated public schools he attended as
both a student and an athlete. Valedictorian of his high school class, he
attended North Carolina A&T State University where in 1971 he received a
B.S. degree in physics. He went on to study physics at MIT, where he
specialized in quantum electronics and laser technology, completing his
Ph.D. in 1977. As a student he performed some of the earliest work on
chemical HF/DF and high pressure CO lasers, publishing pathbreaking
scientific papers on the subject.
McNair was also a physical fitness advocate and
pursued athletic training from an early age. He was a leader in track and
football at his high school. He also became a black belt in Karate, and
while in graduate school began offering classes at St. Paul's AME Church
in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He also participated in several Karate
tournaments, taking more than 30 trophies in these competitions. While
involved in these activities McNair met and married Cheryl B. Moore of
Brooklyn, New York, and they later had two children. After completing his
Ph.D. he began working as a physicist at the Optical Physics Department of
Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California, and conducted research
on electro-optic laser modulation for satellite-to-satellite space
communications.
This research led McNair into close contact with
the space program for the first time, and when the opportunity presented
itself he applied for astronaut training. In January 1978 NASA selected
him to enter the astronaut cadre, one of the first three Black Americans
selected. McNair became the second Black American in space between Febrary
3 and 11, 1984, by flying on the Challenger Shuttle mission
STS-41-B. During this mission McNair operated the maneuverable arm built
by Canada used to move payloads in space. The 1986 mission on which he was
killed was his second Shuttle flight.
Ellison S. Onizuka, was the last of the three
mission specialists. He had been born in Kealakekua, Kona, Hawaii, on June
24, 1946, of Japanese-American parents. He attended the University of
Colorado, receiving B.S. and M.S. degrees in engineering in June and
December 1969, respectively. While at the university he married Lorna
Leido Yoshida of Hawaii, and the couple eventually had two children. He
also participated in the Air Force R.O.T.C. program, leading to a
commission in January 1970. Onizuka served on active duty with the Air
Force until January 1978 when he was selected as a NASA astronaut. With
the Air Force in the early 1970s he was an aerospace flight test engineer
at the Sacramento Air Logistics Center. After July 1975 he was assigned to
the Air Force Flight Test Center at Edwards Air Force Base, California, as
squadron flight test officer and later as chief of the engineering support
section.
When Onizuka was selected for the astronaut corps
he entered into a one year training program and then became eligible for
assignment as a mission specialist on future Space Shuttle flights. He
worked on orbiter test and checkout teams and launch support crews at the
Kennedy Space Center for the first two Shuttle missions. Since he was an
Air Force officer on detached duty with NASA, Onizuka was a logical choice
to serve on the first dedicated Department of Defense classified mission.
He was a mission specialist on STS-51-C, taking place 24-27 Jan. 1985 on
the Discovery orbiter. The Challenger flight was his second
Shuttle mission.
The last two members of the Challenger
crew were not officially Federal government employees. Gregory B. Jarvis,
a payload specialist, worked for the Hughes Aircraft Corp.'s Space and
Communications Group in Los Angeles, California, and had been made
available for the Challenger flight by his company. Jarvis had been
born on August 24, 1944, in Detroit, Michigan. He had been educated at the
State University of New York at Buffalo, receiving a B.S. in electrical
engineering (1967); at Northeastern University, Boston, where he received
an M.S. degree in the same field (1969); and at West Coast University, Los
Angeles, where he completed coursework for an M.S. in management science
(1973). Jarvis began work at Hughes in 1973 and served in a variety of
technical positions until 1984 when he was accepted into the astronaut
program under Hughes' sponsorship after competing against 600 other Hughes
employees for the opportunity. Jarvis' duties on the Challenger
flight had revolved around gathering new information on the design of
liquid-fueled rockets.
The last member of the crew was Sharon Christa
McAuliffe, the first teacher to fly in space. Selected from among more
than 11,000 applicants from the education profession for entrance into the
astronaut ranks, McAuliffe had been born on September 2, 1948, the oldest
child of Edward and Grace Corrigan. Her father was at that time completing
his sophomore year at Boston College, but not long thereafter he took a
job as an assistant comptroller in a Boston department store and the
family moved to the Boston suburb of Framingham. As a youth she registered
excitement over the Apollo moon landing program, and wrote years later on
her astronaut application form that "I watched the Space Age being born
and I would like to participate."
McAuliffe attended Framingham State College in
her hometown, graduating in 1970. A few weeks later she married her
longstanding boyfriend, Steven McAuliffe, and they moved to the
Washington, DC, metropolitan area so Steven could attend Georgetown Law
School. She took a job teaching in the secondary schools, specializing in
American history and social studies. They stayed in the Washington area
for the next eight years, she teaching and completing an M.A. from Bowie
State University, in Maryland. They moved to Concord, New Hampshire, in
1978 when Steven accepted a job as an assistant to the state attorney
general. Christa took a teaching post at Concord High School in 1982, and
in 1984 learned about NASA's efforts to locate an educator to fly on the
Shuttle. The intent was to find a gifted teacher who could communicate
with students from space.
NASA selected McAuliffe for this position in the
summer of 1984 and in the fall she took a year-long leave of absence from
teaching, during which time NASA would pay her salary, and trained for an
early 1986 Shuttle mission. She had an immediate rapport with the media,
and the teacher in space program received tremendous popular attention as
a result. It is in part because of the excitement over McAuliffe's
presence on the Challenger that the accident had such a significant
impact on the nation.
For Further Reading:
Joseph D. Atkinson, Jr., and Jay M. Shafritz,
The Real Stuff: A History of the NASA Astronaut Recruitment Program
(New York: Praeger 1985).
Daniel and Susan Cohen, Heroes of the
Challenger (London: Archway Paperbacks, 1986).
Grace Corrigan, A Journal for Christa: Christa
McAuliffe, Teacher in Space (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
1993).
Robert E. Hohler, "I Touch the Future . . ."
The Story of Christa McAuliffe (New York: Random House, 1986).
William P. Rogers, et al., Report of the
Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident, five
volumes (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1986).
David Shayler, Shuttle Challenger (London:
Salamander Books, 1987).
Joseph J. Trento, with reporting by Susan B.
Trento, Prescription for Disaster: From the Glory of Apollo to the
Betrayal of the Shuttle (New York: Crown Pubs., 1987).
Staff of the Washington Post,
Challengers: The Inspiring Life Stories of the Seven Brave Astronauts of
Shuttle Mission 51-L (New York: Pocket Books, 1986). |