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January 28: Judith Resnik

lawrencebush
January 28, 2011

10061568Astronaut Judith Arlene Resnik died at 36 on the Space Shuttle Challenger when it disintegrated during the second minute after lift-off on this date in 1986. The disaster, which also took the life of schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe and five other crew members, resulted in part from NASA’s publicity concerns over its launch schedule and the engineering firm Morton Thiokol’s failure to communicate technical problems with the Shuttle’s “O-Rings.” Resnik, a biomedical and systems engineer as well as a classical pianist, was the second woman and the second Jew (after Boris Volynov of the USSR) to be in outer space, where she had logged 145 hours in orbital weightlessness, with her curly hair flowing wildly. A lunar crater on the dark side of the moon is named for her.

“I want to do everything there is to be done.” —Judith Resnik