Coverage from the day space shuttle Challenger exploded: 7 chosen to do their work added up to a lot of firsts

Being first at something had become all but a routine among space shuttle crews. Even so, the seven persons selected for the crew of Flight 51 L seemed to have more than their share of firsts.

Publicity focused on teacher Christa McAuliffe, the first private citizen aboard a shuttle flight. But there were other firsts among the Challenger's crew -- firsts that symbolized the melting pot atmosphere that has built up during the years of NASA spaceflights.

Mission specialist Ellison Onizuka, 39, was the first Japanese-American astronaut.

Mission specialist Judith Resnik, 36, was the first Jewish astronaut and the second American woman to be in the crew of a spacecraft in orbit.

Mission specialist Ronald McNair, 35, was one of the first blacks in space and was said to represent the new kind of astronaut, with a background in the physical sciences rather than aeronautics.

It was the first shuttle flight for payload specialist Gregory Jarvis, 41, but only because of an irony of fate. Jarvis, who had been awaiting a mission for years, was bumped from two missions, including a Columbia flight in December, after NASA assigned U.S. Rep. Bill Nelson, D-Melbourne, to the crew as a congressional observer.

And it was the first mission for pilot Michael Smith, 40, a highly decorated Navy fighter pilot and Vietnam veteran who became an astronaut in 1980.

Smith, McNair, Resnik, Onizuka and spacecraft commander Francis Scobee, 46, had known for a year that they were scheduled for Flight 51 L. Janet Ross, speaking for NASA at Johnson Space Center in Houston, said the announcement that they were assigned to the flight was made Jan. 29, 1985 -- one year ago today.

Originally, said Ross, the space shuttle Atlantis was scheduled to make Flight 51 L. Preliminary plans also suggested that the flight could be used to return to orbit one of two communications satellites that had malfunctioned in space and been retrieved by a shuttle flight in November 1984.

Astronauts are assigned to shuttle flights on the basis of missions and jobs to do, Ross said. She noted that there is no automatic rotation for shuttle crews. Astronauts spend a year in a candidate program before they enter the pool of astronauts who are eligible for spaceflights.

Some flights call for crew members with a particular specialty. Jarvis, an engineer with Hughes Aircraft Co., was assigned to the Challenger crew to conduct six days of orbital experiments in fluid dynamics, research meant to help build longer-lasting satellites. He had said that he was ''excited but not nervous.''