First african american to travel in space

First black woman in space

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Alan Bartlett Shepard, Jr. better known as Alan Shepard (New Hampshire, United States; November 18, 1923-Pebble Beach, California; July 21, 1998), was one of the group known as the “Mercury Seven”, the first American astronauts.[1][2] He was the fifth man to set foot on the Moon and the second to be launched into space, after Soviet Yuri Gagarin.

On May 5, 1961 (23 days after Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s first orbital flight), Shepard made a suborbital flight aboard the Mercury Redstone 3 spacecraft capsule (for which the then premier of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev, scoffed at the mere “flea jump”). Unlike Gagarin’s flight, Shepard had some control over his suborbital transport (especially in terms of altitude) and landed inside his craft, thus becoming the first full spaceflight by definitions passed by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale.[3][4]Due to this fact, Americans consider him the first U.S. astronaut (although the first proper American orbital flight was made by John Glenn aboard Friendship 7 on February 20, 1962). Shepard’s spacecraft reached an altitude of 187 km, in a flight that lasted 15 minutes (compared to Gagarin’s 357 km maximum altitude and 1:48 h.).

Lovelace – wikipedia

U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Guion S. Bluford became the first African American to travel into space when the space shuttle Challenger lifts off on its third mission.

In 1964, he graduated from Penn State with a degree in aerospace engineering, decided he would need to know how to fly airplanes if he wanted to build them, entered the U.S. Air Force and graduated with his pilot’s wings in 1965.

Bluford was assigned to a combat squadron in Vietnam, where he flew 144 combat missions.  After combat service, he became a flight instructor and in the 1970s received a master’s degree and Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology.

He later flew three more shuttle missions, logging a total of 700 hours in orbit, after returning from NASA, he became vice president and general manager of an engineering firm in Ohio.

Lehmann discontinuity

Mae Carol Jemison (Decatur, Alabama, October 17, 1956) is an engineer, physician, and former NASA astronaut. She was the first black American woman to travel in space. She served as a mission specialist on the space shuttle Endeavour. Jemison joined NASA’s astronaut corps in 1987 and was selected to serve on the STS-47 mission. On that mission, she orbited the Earth for nearly eight days from Sept. 12 to Sept. 20 in 1992.

She was born in Alabama and lived in Chicago. Jemison graduated from Stanford University with degrees in Chemical Engineering and African and African-American studies. She went on to earn her medical degree from Cornell University. She was a physician for the Peace Corps in Liberia and Sierra Leone from 1983 to 1985 and worked as a general practitioner. In pursuit of becoming an astronaut, she applied for a job at NASA.

Returning to the United States after serving in the Peace Corps, Jemison settled in Los Angeles, California. In Los Angeles, he entered private medical practice and took graduate-level engineering courses. The flights of Sally Ride and Guion Bluford in 1983 inspired Jemison to apply for the astronaut program.[4] Jemison first applied for NASA’s astronaut training program in October 1985, but NASA postponed selection of new candidates after the Challenger space shuttle disaster in 1986. Jemison reapplied in 1987 and was chosen from among approximately 2000 candidates to be one of fifteen people in NASA’s Astronaut Group #12, the first group selected after the destruction of Challenger.[8][24] The Associated Press spoke of her as the “first black female astronaut” in 1987.[25] CBS featured Jemison as one of the country’s “most eligible bachelorettes” on Best Catches, a television special hosted by Phylicia Rashad and Robb Weller in 1989.[26] Jemison was also featured as one of the “most eligible bachelors” in the country on Best Catches, a television special hosted by Phylicia Rashad and Robb Weller in 1989.[27] Jemison was also featured on CBS’s “Best Catches”.

Katherine nasa engineer

Next April, astronaut Jessica Watkins will become the first black woman to become a crew member on the International Space Station (ISS). It’s good news, but it’s inevitable that she’s late – how can it be that no other has done so since it was launched into orbit in 1998?

Actually, the first people on the International Space Station were all white men. Surprise to no one. We didn’t have to wait long to see the first woman there, but we had to wait a bit longer until the first black person arrived.

In general, pioneers of different minorities in space have come and gone in dribs and drabs. And, of course, the International Space Station is no exception. That’s why today is a good day to talk about Jessica Watkins, the first black woman on the ISS, but also to remember all those people who, before her, were tearing down the obstacles on a journey beyond Earth.

Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman to go into space. She did so in 1963, aboard the Vostok 6, where she completed up to 48 orbits around our planet in a journey that lasted 3 days.

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