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This story ran in The Boston Globe Jan. 29, 1986, the day after space shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after takeoff, the last major disaster of the US space program.
Challenger's crew
Astronauts who died in blast
1/29/1986
FRANCIS SCOBEE
Francis R. Scobee, 46, commander of yesterday's mission, was on his second shuttle flight. A native of Washington state, Scobee enrolled in the Air Force after high school. He trained first as a mechanic, but attended night school to acquire two years of college credit, then earned a degree from the University of Arizona. Scobee was commissioned in the Air Force and trained as a pilot. He flew combat missions in Vietnam, then attended the Air Force test pilot school. He was selected as an astronaut in 1979.
Scobee's first flight began on April 6, 1984. As the pilot of the shuttle Challenger, he took part in what was the most ambitious mission to that point -- the capture and repair of the faltering sun-watching Solar Max satellite.
Scobee said recently, "My perception is that the real significance of it, and especially a teacher, is that it will get people in this country, especially young people, expecting to fly in space."
Scobee was married to the former June Kent of San Antonio, Texas. They had two children, Kathie, 25, and Richard, 21.
MIKE SMITH
Challenger's pilot, Mike Smith, 40, was a commander in the US Navy. Born and raised in Beauford, N.C., Smith graduated from the Naval Academy, and earned a master's degree from the Navy Postgraduate School.
He was one of the most experienced pilots in the astronaut corps, having logged more than 4,300 hours in 28 types of aircraft.
After earning his master's degree, Smith completed jet training in 1969 and was assigned to the advanced jet training command, where he served as an instructor from 1969 through 1971. During the next two years, he flew A-6 Intruders and completed a Vietnam cruise assigned to the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk.
Before joining NASA as an astronaut in 1980, Smith completed two tours of duty in the Mediterranean Sea aboard the carrier Saratoga. He held the Navy Distinguished Flying Cross, three Air Medals and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry with Silver Star.
Smith was married to the former Jane Jarrell of Charlotte, N.C. They had three children, Scott, 17, Alison, 14, and Erin, 8.
JUDITH RESNIK
Astronaut Judy Resnik, 36, was a classical pianist who earned a doctorate in electrical engineering from the University of Maryland. She was born and raised in Akron and earned a bachelor's degree from Carnegie-Mellon University.
After college, Resnik became a research scientist for RCA, then the National Institutes of Health and later for Xerox.
Resnik said she was looking for a way to broaden her career when she learned that NASA was looking for trained scientists, including women, to fly on the shuttle. She was selected in 1978.
Resnik was trained to work with the shuttle's robot arm. She first flew in 1984, becoming America's second woman in space, after Sally Ride.
"I think the major significance of my being on this flight is not so much that I'm the second woman," she said before that flight, "but that I am the 40th or 45th, or whatever the number is, American astronaut to go on the space shuttle in a period of a couple of years and how far we've come."
Resnik was single.
ELLISON ONIZUKA
Air Force Lt. Col. Ellison S. Onizuka, 39, was an aerospace engineer who taught courses at the elite Air Force test pilot school in California. The Challenger mission was his second space flight.
He was born in Kealakekua, Hawaii, and earned two degrees from the University of Colorado. NASA selected him as an astronaut in 1978.
Onizuka served as an aerospace flight test engineer with the Sacramento Air Logistics Center at McClellan Air Force Base, Calif., where he flight- tested a variety of jets. He was crew member on a secret Defense Department shuttle flight last January.
Onizuka, a mission specialist, said earlier this month that his first task on this mission would have been to deploy "one of the largest communications satellites ever." He then was scheduled to help deploy another satellite that was intended to study Halley's Comet.
The astronaut was married to the former Lorna Leiko Yoshida of Pahala, Hawaii. The couple had two children, Janelle, 16, and Darien, 10.
GREGORY JARVIS
Gregory B. Jarvis, 41, a civilian engineer with Hughes Aircraft Co., had been scheduled for two previous missions but was bumped when NASA assigned a congressman and a senator to those crews.
Born in Detroit and raised in Mohawk, N.Y., he graduated from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1967 with a degree in electrical engineering and two years later earned a master's degree from Northeastern University. While at Northeastern, Jarvis worked for Raytheon in Bedford.
He entered the Air Force in July, 1969, and was assigned to the Space Division at El Segundo, Calif., specializing in tactical communications satellites.
In 1973, after his discharge as a captain, Jarvis joined Hughes Aircraft Co.'s Space and Communications unit. He was chosen to be its first payload specialist on a shuttle flight, where was to conduct six days of experiments designed to lead to more efficient spacecraft.
Jarvis was married to the former Marcia Jarboe and was the father of three children.
RONALD MCNAIR
Mission specialist Ronald E. McNair, 36, was born in Lake City, S.C. He received a degree in physics from North Carolina AT&T State University in 1971 and a doctorate in physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1976.
McNair was the second black American astronaut in space. He made his first space flight in 1984.
McNair was an expert in laser physics. He studied at Ecole D'ete Theorique de Physique in France and worked as a staff physicist with Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, Calif., before being chosen as an astronaut in 1978.
In 1984, McNair -- a former Roxbury resident -- addressed the Massachusetts House, asking the lawmakers to boost teacher salaries. "Down in the inner cities, in the schools of Roxbury, are black minds and talents. Great minds and talent with skills to control a spacecraft or scalpel with the same finesse and dexterity with which they control a basketball," McNair said.
McNair was married to the former Cheryl Moore of Jamaica, N.Y. They had two children.
Compiled from wires with reports by Globe staff reporters Steve Curwood and James L. Franklin
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