Due to the long delay between the last Apollo lunar mission in 1972 and the first flight of the Space Shuttle in 1981, few astronauts from the older groups remained, and they were outnumbered by the newcomers, who became known as the Thirty-Five New Guys (TFNG).

Four members of this group, Dick Scobee, Judith Resnik, Ellison Onizuka, and Ronald McNair, died in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.

These four, plus Shannon Lucid, received the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, giving this astronaut class five total recipients of this top NASA award.

After reading a newspaper report that Wernher von Braun had used slave labor to build his rockets during World War II, she asked him if it was true.

[8] She wanted her original job back,[7] and civil service rules required that affirmative action directors report directly to the administrators of government agencies.

[9] Harris, Samuel Lynn (a former Tuskegee airman) and Joseph M. Hogan prepared a report on the state of equal opportunity in NASA on their own time, and submitted it directly to Fletcher.

[11][12][9] Seventy NASA employees protested the decision, and NAACP Legal Defense Fund lawyers petitioned the United States Civil Service Commission to rule Harris's dismissal as an unlawful reprisal.

In a July 19, 1972, memorandum to Ted Groo, the Associate Administrator for Manned Space Flight, she urged that this be rectified as a matter of urgency.

Assuming twenty months between a call for applications and an individual's first flight, it was estimated NASA would not need to initiate an astronaut recruitment process before 1980.

This encouraged NASA management to believe that women could fly in space without offending contemporary American social and cultural mores regarding sexuality and hygiene, which might have caused embarrassment to the agency.

For mission specialist candidates, the academic degree could also be in the biological sciences, only a NASA class 2 physical was required, no pilot experience was necessary, and the minimum desirable height was 60 inches (150 cm).

Their pay was set at Federal government General Schedule grades 7 to 15, depending on achievements and academic experience, with salaries ranging from around $11,000 to $34,000 (equivalent to $59,000 to $182,000 in 2023).

This was because on June 1, 1976, the Supreme Court had ruled in the case of Hampton v. Mow Sun Wong that the Civil Service Commission could not issue regulations prohibiting the employment of non-citizens.

On September 2, 1976, President Gerald Ford issued Executive Order 11935, requiring citizenship for Federal employment, thereby effectively nullifying the Supreme Court's ruling.

On December 7, 1976, NASA's Director of Personnel, Carl Grant, advised the selection board that any applications accepted from non-citizens should be on the understanding that they would take up US citizenship before the end of the two-year training and evaluation period.

[38] Applicants were put up at the Kings Inn Ramada in Clear Lake, Texas, where an evening reception and pre-interview briefing was held.

[39] In all, six of finalists who were passed over in 1978 would later qualify as pilot astronaut candidates in 1980: John Blaha, Roy Bridges, Guy Gardner, Ronald Grabe, Bryan O'Connor, and Richard Richards as pilots, and six as mission specialists: James Bagian, Bonnie Dunbar, Bill Fisher, John Lounge, Jerry Ross and Robert Springer.

Three were outside the United States; Kathy Sullivan was in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, working on her PhD; Steven Hawley was doing post-doctoral research in Chile, and David Walker was serving on the aircraft carrier USS America in the Mediterranean Sea.

McBride was scheduled to fly again as commander of STS-61-E in March 1986, but the mission was cancelled in the wake of the January 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.

He was the Deputy Manager, Operations Integration, National Space Transportation System Program Office at JSC from September 1982 until July 1983, Deputy Chief of the Aircraft Operations Division at JSC from July 1985 toAugust 1986, and Chief of the Mission Support Branch of the Astronaut Office from September 1986 to December 1988.

Fabian left NASA on January 1, 1986, and returned to the USAF as the Director of Space in the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Air Force, Plans and Operations.

He joined the Navy in 1969, and flew 60 combat missions in the Vietnam War as a McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II pilot with Fighter Squadron 154 (VF-154) aboard the aircraft carrier USS Ranger.

[115] Huntoon was the most senior woman in a technical position at JSC, and became the default liaison between the six women astronaut candidates and NASA management.

[118] Psychological testing soon showed that the women astronauts had far more in common with their male counterparts than with the female population of the United States as a whole.

[119] Of the 35 astronaut candidates, 20 came from the armed services, and four others (Terry Hart, David Griggs, Norman Thagard and Ox van Hoften) had previously served in the military but were civilians at the time of their selection.

The training was highly realistic, and concluded with each candidate being towed aloft under a parasail before being released 400 feet (120 m) above the water and dropped in while wearing their full flight gear.

Due the energy crisis of the 1970s and the consequent soaring cost of jet fuel, flight time was restricted to 15 hours a month.

[133] For the OFTs, the role of capsule communicator (CAPCOM), the astronaut at the Mission Control Center at JSC who spoke directly to the crew, was allocated to veteran astronauts, with a member of the TFNG as his backup, but Dan Brandenstein stepped up to become the CAPCOM for the ascent phase of the first mission, STS-1, when Ed Gibson retired.

NASA management wanted a woman and an African American flown as soon as possible, so George Abbey selected Sally Ride and Guion Bluford.

[57] These missions began a sizable number of American spaceflight "firsts" achieved by the group: Four members of the group, Dick Scobee, Judy Resnik, Ellison Onizuka and Ronald McNair, died in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster[140] These four, plus Shannon Lucid, received the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, giving this astronaut class five total recipients of this top NASA award.