to apply. 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. She also met with another former astronaut, John Glenn, who was now a United States senator from her home state of Ohio. Nahmi convinced her to obtain a private pilot's license to bolster her credentials. Resnik qualified as a pilot in 1977, while completing her Ph.D., having achieved near-perfect scores in her flying exams (two 100s and a 98). When she received a promotion at RCA and again when she completed her doctorate, he suggested she send NASA a telegram informing them. Resnik's mentor and advisor, Professor Angel G. Jordan, then Dean of Carnegie Mellon College of Engineering and later provost of Carnegie Mellon, also encouraged Resnik to apply for the program. After she completed her doctorate, Resnik became a senior systems engineer for Xerox Corporation in Los Angeles, working in product development. She rented an apartment in Redondo Beach, California, where she would jog along the beach to improve her stamina and reduce her weight. In January 1978, at age 28, Resnik was selected as a mission specialist with NASA Astronaut Group 8, one of twenty-nine men and six women selected out of 8,029 applicants in the first NASA astronaut selection that included women. This involved taking a pay cut, as her new salary was considerably less than what she was being paid at Xerox. Her fellow astronaut candidates nicknamed her "JR". She dated some of them. She trained intensely and with great determination, focusing particularly on her physical fitness. She piloted the Northrop T-38 Talon, an aircraft used by NASA astronauts for transportation and training. Astronaut Jerome Apt described her as "an excellent pilot". Asked about Resnik, fellow astronaut Rhea Seddon said: "I thought she was really really bright, obviously a very beautiful person, flirtatious, funny. She was just a live wire. We would do the happy hours, or we'd go on these NASA trips, and Judy was just a star attraction." Resnik worked on research into the principle of orbital systems, flight software and the development of systems of manual control of spacecraft. She developed the software and operating procedures for the Space Shuttle's Remote Manipulator System (RMS). She also developed the deployment systems for the tethered satellite systems and worked on orbiter development, writing software