Recognized while still a child for her intellectual brilliance, Resnik was accepted at Carnegie Institute of Technology after becoming only the sixteenth woman in the history of the United States to have attained a perfect score on the SAT exam.

[8] Resnik grew up in an observant Jewish home, studying at Hebrew school at Beth El Synagogue in Akron and celebrating her Bat Mitzvah in 1962.

Nonetheless, she continued to see him secretly, and when she stayed with a cousin in Cleveland while taking a college course available to high school students, she also met with him there.

[21] At age 17, Resnik entered Carnegie Institute of Technology,[10] where she joined the Alpha Epsilon Phi sorority.

[21] She began college intending to become a math major, but in her second year, after attending electrical engineering lectures with her boyfriend Michael Oldak, she developed a passion for the subject.

[22] She became a member of Tau Beta Pi, Mortar Board,[23] and Eta Kappa Nu honor societies.

An academic paper she wrote on special purpose integrated circuitry caught the attention of NASA during this time.

[10] In 1977 she earned her PhD in electrical engineering with honors at the University of Maryland,[16] writing her dissertation on "Bleaching kinetics of visual pigments".

[24] An academic paper co-written by her concerning the biomedical engineering of optometry ("A novel rapid scanning microspectrophotometer and its use in measuring rhodopsin photoproduct pathways and kinetics in frog retinas") was published in the Journal of the Optical Society of America in 1978.

They read Carrying the Fire, the 1974 book by Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins, and she met with him in his office at the National Air and Space Museum.

[16] After she completed her doctorate, Resnik became a senior systems engineer for Xerox Corporation in Los Angeles, working in product development.

[16] Asked about Resnik, fellow astronaut Rhea Seddon said: "I thought she was really really bright, obviously a very beautiful person, flirtatious, funny.

[34][10] She disliked the part of her job that required making public appearances and drumming up support for the space program.

[35] Other astronauts felt that either Resnik or Sally Ride would become the first woman in the group to fly in space, as they received the sorts of technical assignments that best prepared them for flight, such as capsule communicator (CapCom) duties.

[41] She was the center of attention on such visits, and one contractor engineer became a stalker, sending her unwelcome letters, poems and gifts.

[42][i] After Hawley and Mullane had a fawning encounter with actor Bo Derek, who was working on the film Tarzan, the Ape Man, Resnik started calling Mullane "Tarzan" and Hawley "Cheetah";[44][45] when the office secretaries heard about this, they began referring to the STS-41-D crew as the "zoo crew".

[49] That day Resnik also deployed the OAST-1 solar array wing,[49] considered a potential future way of generating more electrical power during space missions.

[56] During the mission, she held up a hand-written sign saying "Hi Dad" to the cameras, and in a live televised broadcast told President Ronald Reagan "the Earth looks great".

"[57] Discovery landed at Edwards Air Force Base on September 5, after a flight lasting 6 days and 56 minutes.

The main objective of this mission was to launch TDRS-B, the second in a series of NASA Tracking and Data Relay Satellites.

[58] It would also carry the Spartan (Shuttle Pointed Autonomous Research Tool for Astronomy), which would use two ultraviolet spectrometers to study the tail of Comet Halley.

[59] Resnik was primarily responsible for the operation of the RMS and, with fellow astronaut Ronald McNair, would deploy and later retrieve the Spartan.

[59] Resnik was part of the team of astronauts who flew to Washington, D.C., to speak to the 113 finalists, and provide them an insider's view of a Space Shuttle mission.

[63] Resnik's father and stepmother, and her brother and his family watched the launch from the VIP area, as did her Firestone High math teacher.

A minute later it broke up, torn apart by aerodynamic forces after a catastrophic failure of an O-ring seal on the starboard solid rocket booster.

[65] Resnik's last recorded words aboard Challenger regarded scanning for "LVLH" (local vertical/local horizontal), reminding the cockpit crew of a switch configuration change to the attitude direction indicator.

[10][ii] Following the disaster, examination of the recovered vehicle cockpit revealed that the Personal Egress Air Packs were activated for pilot Mike Smith and two other crew members.

[70] The remains of the seven crew members were cremated, comingled and buried at the Space Shuttle Challenger Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery on May 20, 1986.

[79] A memorial to Resnik and the rest of the crew of Challenger was dedicated in Seabrook, Texas, where she lived while stationed at the Johnson Space Center.

[82] The Society of Women Engineers (SWE) awards the Resnik Challenger Medal annually to "a woman who has changed the space industry, has personally contributed innovative technology verified by flight experience ... and will be recognized through future decades as having created milestones in the development of space as a resource for all humankind.