The University of Colorado Boulder will rename the Williams Village East residence hall to Onizuka Hall in honor of alumnus and astronaut Ellison Onizuka, who died on the failed space shuttle Challenger mission in 1986.
Onizuka, who graduated from CU Boulder in 1969, was the first Asian American, the first Hawaiian and the first person of Japanese ancestry to explore space. The University of Colorado Board of Regents approved the renaming on Thursday.
After he graduated from CU Boulder, Onizuka entered active duty with the United States Air Force in January 1970. He worked as an aerospace flight test engineer at McClellan Air Force Base and at the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base. After logging more than 1,700 hours of flight time, he was selected as an astronaut candidate in January 1978.
Onizuka's first NASA flight was on the space shuttle Discovery in 1985, where he was a mission specialist. The shuttle spent 74 hours in space and completed 48 orbits of Earth. Onizuka carried a CU flag and football with him on the mission, and both are on display in the CU Heritage Center.
Professor Emeritus Robert Culp, Onizuka's adviser, remembered how invested Onizuka was in encouraging students to achieve their career goals.
"After he became an astronaut, he would come back periodically and visit with us and give talks to our students," Culp said in CU Boulder's written renaming recommendation. "Students love to talk to astronauts, of course, and he was always interested in helping the university in any way he could."
After the Discovery mission, Onizuka was selected for the Challenger mission. On Jan. 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after launch. All seven astronauts on board died aboard the shuttle.
On the back of every U.S. citizen's passport is a quote from Onizuka. It reads: "Every generation has the obligation to free men's minds for a look at new worlds ... to look out from a higher plateau than the last generation."