A highlight of black people who have helped make space exploration possible. Guion “Guy” Bluford was the first Black man in space as a mission specialist aboard the space shuttle 'Challenger' in 1983. Of 10,000 applicants to the NASA space program, Guion S. Bluford was one of 35 chosen to join the new space shuttle team in January 1978.Benjamin Banneker, apart from making the first functioning wooden clock in the US, was an astronomer who was widely known for his astronomical ephemerides & almanacs in which he used calculations to accurately predict events like solar eclipses, planetary conjunctions, etc. He also helped survey and design Washington D.C.
Benjamin also studied the relativity of time and space. His revelations on the topic preceded Einstein's Theory of Relativity by two centuries. Random Fact: They were both autistic. In 1980, Cosmonaut Arnaldo Tamayo, became the first astronaut of African descent to go to space by the Soviet Union. Soviet Union sent the first woman, the first Asian man and the first black man into orbit years before the U.S. (NASA)
Katherine Johnson is known for computing & calculating the trajectories for Freedom 7 and Friendship 7. She helped calculate the precise trajectories that allowed Apollo 11 to land on the moon in 1969. She hand-calculated trajectories for early NASA missions before computers were widely used.Mary Jackson was the first Black female engineer at NASA in 1958. She paved way and advocated for NASA’s female mathematicians, engineers, and scientists. She authored/co-authored 12 technical papers for NACA and NASA.
Dorothy Vaughan was a highly accomplished mathematician and handled complex and challenging assignments. She was the first African-American female supervisor of the NACA, which later became NASA. She was an expert programmer in FORTRAN, which calculated trajectories and landings of spacecraft.Valerie Thomas, NASA physicist: In 1977 she began to develop the illusion transmitter, the 1st mechanism that allowed images to be viewed in 3D using concave mirrors & rays of light She received the Goddard Space Flight Center Award of Merit & the NASA Equal Opportunity Medal
Lonnie Johnson, NASA engineer, worked for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a systems engineer for the Galileo and Cassini missions. He helped launch the Galileo mission to Jupiter. He also invented the Super Soaker. He made your childhood hot summers fun.
Christine Darden, mathematician, data analystand aerospace engineer, is most noted for her work in sonic boom reduction, prediction & supersonic wing design. sonic boom is a shock wave that occurs when an object goes faster than the speed of sound
In 1995, Bernard Harris became the first Black American astronaut to walk in space. He became interested in science as a young boy, and entered his teenage years as the space program began to gain momentum. Remembers Harris: "We have put a man into orbit, and now we're into the Apollo program. And so I watched that develop, and when I was thirteen, '69 was when it really all kind of came together for me....Now, I'm being exposed to science. I'm being exposed to, you know, chemistry, to aviation.
I belong to the Rocket Club where we built rockets, Estes rockets. We even built a flying saucer that left a, you know, real big impression on me because I was also, now, I've got television reception, right? So then I'm watching 'Buck Rogers' and I'm watching 'Star Trek' and, you know, I'm watching sci-fi shows. It's just feeding the imagination of this kid."