On January 16, 1978, NASA announced that it had selected the
first group of Space Shuttle astronauts; it was the agency’s
first co-ed and multiracial astronaut class. Three African-American
men, one Asian man, and six white women were included in the
newest selection of thirty-five astronauts. In recognition
of Black History Month, JSC celebrates the first three African-Americans
to be named to the Astronaut Office: Guion S. Bluford, Frederick
D. Gregory, and Ronald E. McNair.
Bluford came to Houston from the Wright-Patterson Air Force
Base in Ohio, having just defended his doctorate in aerospace
engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology. He,
like many of his classmates, was a Vietnam veteran who had
flown combat missions in Southeast Asia. He and McNair had
been selected as mission specialists, scientists who would
conduct scientific research in the Orbiter and use the Shuttle’s
arm to capture satellites and maneuver EVA crew members.
Gregory, the oldest of the three and only one named as a pilot
astronaut, was a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy. He
served as a rescue helicopter pilot in Vietnam. When he returned
to the States, Gregory attended test pilot school at Patuxent
River and eventually became a research test pilot at the Langley
Research Center. At the time of the announcement he held a
master’s degree in information systems from George Washington
University.
McNair had grown up poor in the segregated community of Lake
City, South Carolina, where he also faced racial discrimination.
He excelled in academics and became valedictorian of his high
school class. In 1976 he earned a doctorate in physics from
the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and
upon graduation Hughes Research Laboratories offered him a
position at their lab in Malibu, California. All three men
relocated to Texas and reported for duty in July 1978 at the
Johnson Space Center.
In 1982, NASA released the names of the astronauts assigned
to STS-7, 8, and 9. STS-7 included a female crew member, Sally
K. Ride, and Bluford was one of four men assigned to the next
flight, STS-8. In August 1983, he would become the first African-American
in space. Five months later McNair flew onboard Challenger
with a five-member crew. The highlight of STS-41B was the
first use of the Manned Maneuvering Unit, a backpack unit
allowing astronauts to fly free of the Space Shuttle in Earth
orbit. Gregory, the last of the trio to fly, was assigned
to STS-51B, a Spacelab mission. As he circled the Earth, Gregory’s
global perspective evolved. “From space you can’t
see discernible borders and you begin to question why people
don’t like each other, because it looked like just one
big neighborhood down there. The longer I was there,”
he said, “the greater my [ideas about] ‘a citizen
of’ changed.” Bluford completed a second mission
sponsored by West Germany in the fall of 1985 known as D-1
(STS-61A), Challenger’s last successful flight.
Challenger and the crew of STS-51L, which included McNair,
were lost just a few months later, on January 28, 1986. Gregory,
then sitting at the CapCom console in Mission Control, watched
the tragedy unfold and spent the next few days protecting
the astronaut families from the media. Bluford dedicated himself
to ensuring that future crews would fly in a safer spacecraft.
Crews passed along mock “keys” for each Orbiter,
and 61A had not had a chance to present the Challenger key
to 51L before the launch. “After the accident,”
Bluford later recalled, “I continued to display the
Challenger key in my office as a reminder to all that flying
in space was dangerous and that we needed to be vigilant if
we were going to pursue this profession safely.”
Bluford and Gregory went on to fly two additional Shuttle
missions each. Gregory moved from JSC to NASA Headquarters
in 1992, where he served as the Associate Administrator for
the Office of Safety and Mission Assurance for nine years,
Associate Administrator for the Office of Space Flight, and
finally as NASA Deputy Administrator from 2002-2005. He resigned
in the fall of 2005, just a few months after the flight of
STS-114, the return to flight following the Columbia accident.
Bluford left NASA in 1993 to work for private industry.
To read more about the careers and experiences of these remarkable
astronauts, including NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden, who
was selected in the 1980 astronaut class, visit the JSC Oral
History Project homepage at: http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/oral_histories/oral_histories.htm
A selection of excerpts from interviews and links to the oral
history interviews conducted with some of the African-Americans
who contributed to NASA’s history can be found on the
JSC History Portal: http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/special_events/BHM.htm.
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