Space Shuttle Challenger was destroyed
A sad day in history and reminder of the sacrifice these brave men and women made.
On this day in 1986, Space Shuttle Challenger was destroyed 73 seconds after lift-off killing her crew of seven astronauts. The crew consisted of Commander Dick Scobee, Pilot Mike Smith, Mission Specialists Ron McNair, Ellison Onizuka, and Judy Resnik, Teacher In Space Christa McAuliffe and Payload Specialist Greg Jarvis of Detroit, MI. We have a display dedicated to Greg Jarvis, including a patch donated by his widow, Marcia Jarvis, in our astronaut gallery. The indoor photo below shows the inside of the astronaut beach house at the Kennedy Space Center. Taken on January 24, 1986, it shows (L-R) Greg Jarvis and his wife, Marcia, and Ellison Onizuka and his wife, Lorna. The beach house is a place the crew and their families can gather in the days before launch. This photo is from the Marcia Jarvis collection.
Captain Gregory B. Jarvis
U.S.A.F. / Astronaut
Detroit, Michigan
Greg Jarvis was born in Detroit on August 24, 1944. Two years later his family moved to Mohawk, New York, the hometown of his father. He graduated from Mohawk High School in 1962 and went on to attend the State University of New York in Buffalo. While participating in their ROTC program, he graduated in 1967 with a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering. Two years later he obtained his M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Northeastern University. He then joined the U.S. Air Force and was assigned to the Space and Missile Systems Organization in El Segundo, California, arriving on the day Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. He first served as a Communications Payload Engineer in the Satellite Communications Program Office. Greg was also involved in the concept and design of the FLTSATCOM communications payload. After his honorable discharge as a Captain in 1973 he went to work for Hughes Aircraft Company in their Space and Communications group, first working as a Communications Subsystem Engineer on the Marisat Program. In 1975, he worked in the Marisat F-3 program as its Spacecraft Test and Integration Manager. Following its launch in 1976 he became a member of the Systems Applications Laboratory where he worked on advanced communications systems. He joined the Advanced Program Laboratory in 1978, working on the Syncom IV/Leasat Program, serving as its Power/Thermal/Harness Subsystem Engineer in 1979. In 1981, he became the Spacecraft Bus System Engineering and in 1982, the Assistant Spacecraft System Engineering Manager. He became the Test and Integration Manager for three Marisat satellites in 1983. He was selected as a payload specialist astronaut in July 1984, one of two chosen from Hughes Aircraft out of 600 applicants. He was first assigned to fly on Space Shuttle missions STS-51D, STS-51I and then STS-61C, only to be bumped to make room for Senator Jake Garn, a mission already too busy for his experiments, and to make room for Congressman Bill Nelson, respectively. Greg was finally assigned to serve as Payload Specialist 2 on STS-51L (Challenger). His role was to perform experiments related to the development of lighter fuel for the satellites that were then being launched by the space shuttle. Challenger was launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, at 11:38:00 am EST on January 28, 1986. An o-ring failure on one of the twin solid rocket boosters led to the destruction of Challenger 73 seconds into the flight, killing the crew of seven. Greg’s crewmates on Challenger were commander Francis “Dick” Scobee, pilot Michael Smith, mission specialists Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka and Judy Resnik, and Teacher In Space Christa McAuliffe. He was posthumously awarded a masters degree in management science by West Coast University, an award he was to have received while in orbit. In 2004, Jarvis and his six crewmates were posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.
