There were three black men, six women, and one Asian man in that class,” Lewis says. “The class of 1978 was the first class of NASA astronauts that included women and minorities. Bluford was an Air Force pilot, and in 1978, he was selected to be an astronaut - eventually becoming the first Black American to go to space. Bluford NASA/Interim Archives/Getty Images Lawrence was in the back seat of a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter at Edwards Air Force Base in California when it crashed due to the pilot making an error during a test flight. “Had he lived, he would have been transferred to NASA as a NASA astronaut candidate and would have been the first black man to fly in space.” “Lawrence unfortunately died in December of 1967,” Lewis says. Air Force to become a member of a group of aerospace research pilots for the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) Program. Walking through the doors that Dwight flung open was Robert Lawrence, America’s first Black astronaut. Robert Lawrence Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images Today, he’s an accomplished and highly prolific sculptor. For the past few decades, however, he’s focused his mind on art. He was a systems engineer for IBM, an aviation consultant, a real estate developer, and even a restauranteur. Since then, Dwight has held down a mind-bogglingly wide variety of different occupations. No Black American had ever been a candidate for the astronaut program before, so Dwight’s candidacy helped open that door. “He had been nominated to go through the screening through pressures from the White House.” “He didn’t make it through the screening, but it was a celebrated episode,” Lewis says. Lewis tells Digital Trends that this was viewed as a big deal at the time. The Kennedy administration selected Dwight to go through pre-astronaut training because he was a talented pilot in the U.S. The astronauts Ed Dwight Bettmann Archive/Getty ImagesĮd Dwight was the first Black American to be considered for a spot in NASA’s astronaut corps. Here are a few of the individuals she highlighted. Cathleen Lewis, a curator at the National Air and Space Museum. To learn more about these influential people and their stories, we spoke to Dr. Rocket Lab aces its first launch from U.S. astronauts on a spacewalk at the ISS on Friday issues its first-ever fine for space debris
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