Ed Dwight, America's first Black astronaut candidate, has finally made it to space 60 years later, flying with Jeff Bezos’ rocket company. The 90-year-old...
Brief flight from West Texas with Jeff Bezos’ rocket company also made Ed Dwight, 90, the record-holder for oldest person in space.
FILE - Former NASA astronaut Ed Dwight poses for a portrait to promote the National Geographic documentary film "The Space Race" during the Winter Television Critics Association Press Tour, Thursday, Feb. 8, 2024. America's first Black astronaut candidate has finally made it to space 60 years later, flying with Jeff Bezos’ rocket company. Ninety-year-old Dwight blasted off from West Texas with five other passengers on Sunday, May 19, 2024.
Dwight was an Air Force pilot when President John F. Kennedy championed him as a candidate for NASA’s early astronaut corps. But he wasn’t picked for the 1963 class.Dwight, now 90, went through a few minutes of weightlessness with five other passengers aboard the Blue Origin capsule as it skimmed space on a roughly 10-minute flight. He called it “a life-changing experience.”“I thought I really didn’t need this in my life,” Dwight said shortly after exiting the capsule.
It was Blue Origin’s first crew launch in nearly two years. The company was grounded following a 2022 accident in which the booster came crashing down but the capsule full of experiments safely parachuted to the ground. Flights resumed last December but with no one aboard. This was Blue Origin’s seventh time flying space tourists.Dwight, a sculptor from Denver, was joined by four business entrepreneurs from the U.S. and France and a retired accountant.
Dwight was among the potential astronauts the Air Force recommended to NASA. But he wasn’t chosen for the 1963 class, which included eventual Gemini and Apollo astronauts, including Apollo 11′s Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins. NASA didn’t select Black astronauts until 1978, and Guion Bluford became the first African American in space in 1983. Three years earlier, the Soviets launched the first Black astronaut, Arnaldo Tamayo Mendez, a Cuban of African descent.
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