Former test pilot Ed Dwight made his first trip to space yesterday, approximately 63 years after he first trained to become the first Black American astronaut.
Dwight, 90, and five other crewmates launched into space on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket from the West Texas site. The flight was estimated to be about 10 minutes, reaching over 347,000 feet past the Karman line that marks the start of space.
Blue Origin’s venture into space marked the seventh human flight it has orchestrated, but the first since the Federal Aviation Administration put a brief pause on the program following a failure in 2022.
With the flight, Dwight officially became the oldest person to go to space, surpassing Star Trek actor William Shatner by a few months.
Immediately after exiting the shuttle, Dwight expressed his excitement.
“Long time coming,” said Dwight per ABC News. “It was absolutely terrific. I thought I really didn’t need this in my life, but now I need it in my life. I am ecstatic. It was a life-changing experience.”
Dwight’s trip into space was partially sponsored by the nonprofit Space for Humanity.
Now a sculptor, he was once a candidate for the 1963 class, which included astronauts Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin, after joining the Aerospace Research Pilot School in 1961. Although he reached Phase II of the training force, he was not chosen to be sent into space, eventually resigning from the Air Force three years later in 1966.
In 1983, approximately 20 years after Dwight, aerospace engineer and astronaut Guion Bluford eventually became the first Black American to go into space as a member of the Challenger shuttle that orbited Earth.
Three years prior, in 1979, the Soviet Union sent Arnaldo Tamayo Mendez, a Cuban man of African descent, into space, making him the first Black person to go into space.
Following his retirement from the Air Force, Dwight worked as an engineer, realtor and for IBM.
He also became notable for his sculpting, drawing acclaim for his usage of negative space in works dedicated to the civil rights movement and other influential Black figures.
In 2020, he was celebrated as a trailblazer himself with the status of an honorary member of the U.S. Space Force; a year later, NASA also commemorated him by naming an asteroid after him.
His sculptures have also been sent into space.
“When being an astronaut didn’t work all those years ago, he gracefully pivoted to doing something else,” said astronaut Leland Melvin per NPR when Dwight’s trip into space was first announced. “It was just as impactful — just as impactful, especially in the Black community, which were his sculptures. He will now get his chance to do some zero-G floating and look at the planet from another vantage point.”
