 Judith Resnik Judith Arlene Resnik (April 5, 1949 - January 28, 1986) was an astronaut who died in the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion during the launch of the mission STS-51-L.
Born in Akron, Ohio, Resnik, who was Jewish, received a B.S. in electrical engineering from Carnegie-Mellon University in 1970, and a doctorate in that field in 1977 at the University of Maryland. After graduation from Carnegie-Mellon, she was employed at RCA where she was a design engineer, and later worked with various NASA projects contracted to the company.
While working toward her doctorate, Resnik was affiliated with the National Institutes of Health as a biomedical engineer. Later, she was a systems engineer with Xerox Corporation.
Resnik was selected for the astronaut program in January 1978, and had served as a mission specialist on the maiden voyage of Space Shuttle Discovery, August-September 1984. She was likewise a mission specialist aboard the Challenger.
Bizarre incident
In January 2003 a mentally disturbed student cruised with a stolen motor glider between the high-rise builings of the banking district in Frankfurt, Germany. He threatened to crash into the European Central Bank building and declared this was to remind the public of the fate of Judy Resnik, his idol.
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