The commander of the ill-fated Challenger space shuttle flight is being remembered on the 40th anniversary of the first space flight in a commercial spacecraft bearing his name.
NASA astronaut Francis R. “Dick” Scobee, who flew on Challenger twice (first as pilot in 1984 and then as commander two years later), is also the name of Northrop Grumman’s 21st cargo vehicle.
“For every commercial resupply mission to the International Space Station, we name our Cygnus spacecraft after a pioneer in human spaceflight. Today, I am honored to announce that the Cygnus cargo spacecraft for the upcoming NG-21 mission to the International Space Station will be named in honor of former astronaut, pilot and engineer Francis Richard Scobee,” Brandon White, vice president and general manager of tactical space systems at Northrop Grumman, said in a video statement released by the company on Monday (July 1).
“We are privileged to honor Dick Scobee’s legacy and recognize his achievements as a pioneer who made tremendous contributions to human spaceflight and our collective reach in space exploration,” White said.
Selected as an astronaut with NASA’s first group of shuttle trainees in 1978, Scobee spent nearly seven days as the pilot of STS-41C, a mission that included the first repair of a satellite in Earth orbit. Scobee came to NASA from the U.S. Air Force, where he served as a fighter pilot in the Vietnam War and as a test pilot for the Boeing 747 jetliner, the X-24B lifting body, and the C-5 Galaxy cargo plane.
Relating to: The space shuttle Challenger and the disaster that changed NASA forever
On January 28, 1986, Scobee and six of his STS-51L crewmates were killed when Challenger disintegrated 73 seconds into its 10th mission. The incident occurred when a seal failed in one of the spacecraft’s two solid-fuel rocket boosters. (In 2018, Northrop Grumman acquired the company that manufactured Challenger’s boosters and all of the solid-fuel rocket motors used during the 30-year space shuttle program.)
Scobee was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor and was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in 2004. His memory is kept alive by the Challenger Center, an educational organization founded by the families of the STS-51L crew. Scobee’s widow, June Scobee Rodgers, served as the center’s founding president.
“Dick’s legacy continues to inspire generations of aspiring pilots, engineers and students eager to test the limits of human spaceflight technology and space exploration,” said Quinn Duffy, an engineer at Northrop Grumman.
The “SS Francis R. ‘Dick’ Scobee” is scheduled to launch to the space station in early August. It will be the second Cygnus to fly on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as Northrop Grumman transitions its Antares rocket from Russian-made engines to U.S.-based hardware developed by Firefly Aerospace.
NG-21 Cygnus will carry food, supplies and equipment to the space station, including a bioreactor to demonstrate the production of blood and immune stem cells and the study of vascularized liver tissue. The mission will also fly several test vehicles to observe water flow in microgravity as part of a new NASA “STEMonstration” educational demonstration payload.
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SS Francis R. “Dick” Scobee is the second Cygnus spacecraft that Northrop Grumman has named for a member of the STS-51L crew who lost his life. Mission specialist Ellison Onizuka, who became the first Asian American to be launched into space on his maiden flight in 1985, was similarly honored with the naming of the NG-16 spacecraft.
Other Cygnus honorees include company executive J.R. Thompson, Air Force Manned Orbital Laboratory (MOL) candidate Robert Lawrence, NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson, and astronauts David Low, Gordon Fullerton, Janice Voss, Deke Slayton, Rick Husband, Alan Poindexter, John Glenn, Gene Cernan, John Young, Roger Chaffee, Alan Bean, Kalpana Chawla, Piers Sellers, Sally Ride, and Laurel Clark.
The latest Cygnus, the SS Patricia “Patty” Hilliard Robertson, named after an astronaut who died in a plane crash before launching into space, has been on the station since January. It is scheduled to be released from the orbital complex on July 12 and make a catastrophic re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere.
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