Judith Resnik

Born on 5 April 1949 in Akron, Ohio, engineer Judith Resnik was the second US woman to go to space. Resnik received a BS in electrical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 1970 and a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Maryland in 1977. While working toward her doctorate, Resnik also worked as an engineer for RCA and the National Institutes of Health. She was employed as a senior systems engineer at Xerox when she was selected as an astronaut candidate by NASA in January 1978, becoming one of the first women to enter the US space program. During her first six years at NASA, she worked on several projects, including the remote manipulator system, designed to move objects outside a spacecraft. She made her first spaceflight in 1984 as a mission specialist on the maiden voyage of the space shuttle Discovery, during which she was responsible for unfurling a 102-foot-long solar sail. On 28 January 1986, Resnik and six fellow crew members died when the space shuttle Challenger exploded just seconds after takeoff, one of the worst space disasters in history. Resnik was awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor posthumously. (Photo credit: NASA)

Date in History: 5 April 1949