#06. Story of Ellison S. Onizuka Space Shuttle Pioneer
Story of Ellison S. Onizuka Space Shuttle Pioneer Space pioneers are trained and dedicated: the best in the field. Space Shuttle pioneer Ellison S. Onizuka was a Hawaiian-born Air Force Reserve Officer, aerospace engineer, test pilot, NASA Astronaut Class of 1978. The first Asians in space were on Soyuz missions: Phạm Tuân (1980) of Vietnam, Jügderdemidiin Gürragchaa (1981) of Mongolia, and Rakesh Sharma (1984) of India. • Onizuka was the first Asian American in space (1985), flying Space Shuttle Discovery in its STS-51C mission, the first classified DoD mission. • His second space mission was STS-51L (1986) on Space Shuttle Challenger, which exploded 73 seconds after take-off killing all seven crew members including two women and one black. • Space Shuttle Columbia (2003), mission STS-107, disintegrated during re-entry killing all seven astronauts. • The Space Shuttle retired in 2011 after 135 missions: 133 succeeded and 2 failed, with 1 partial failure (STS-83).