Word: onizuka
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Dates: during 1986-1986
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...settled into their couches on the orbiter's two decks, just ahead of Challenger's cargo bay. Commander Dick Scobee and Pilot Michael Smith were strapped into the flight deck; behind them were Judith Resnik, an electrical engineer, and Ronald McNair, a physicist. On the middeck below were Ellison Onizuka, an aerospace engineer; Gregory Jarvis, an electrical engineer; and McAuliffe. Lying on their backs, they could see a bright blue sky ahead of them. The countdown reached T (for takeoff) minus nine minutes--and stayed there for four hours...
Thousands of motorists in the cape area, listening to their radios, pulled off highways and faced the ocean. On Challenger's middeck, Onizuka, Jarvis and McAuliffe had nothing to do except wait. At dozens of points around the globe, radar tracking stations had now synchronized their antenna systems with the countdown sequence in Florida...
...became an instant hero to both Hawaiians and Japanese Americans last January as the first member of either group to fly in space. Ellison Onizuka was a mission specialist on last year's classified military flight of Discovery, but he was perhaps most appreciated among colleagues for his gentle, unassuming manner. Describing one of the tasks he was to perform on Challenger, to film Halley's comet with a hand-held camera, he remarked with typical understatement, "I'll be looking at Halley's comet. They tell me I'll have one of the best views around...
...grandson of Japanese immigrants, Onizuka grew up in the village of Kealakekua, on the Kona coast of Hawaii island. As a boy, he worked in the island's rich coffee fields, but his mind was on the stars, which he liked to examine through a telescope at Honolulu's Bishop Museum. The oldest of four children, Onizuka was a star athlete, an honor student and an Eagle Scout. He studied aerospace engineering at the University of Colorado in Boulder, earning undergraduate and graduate degrees. He then spent eight years as a test pilot and flight engineer with the Air Force...
...Onizuka, 41, lived with his wife and their two children in Houston. But wherever he went, he kept memories and icons of his past. Before his first space flight, he presented the Mission Control staff with coffee beans and macadamia nuts from Hawaii. For last week's flight, he persuaded the staff to let him affix a University of Colorado emblem on a satellite that was to track Halley's comet. Onizuka also brought along his college ring. "He wears it whenever he flies," said his wife. Several years ago he visited his family's ancestral gravesite in Japan...