MISGUIDED MAGAZINE SPRING 2020

VOL 4
SPACE EXPLORERS
GUION STEWART
BLUFORD JR., PH.D.
Guion Stewart Bluford Jr., Ph.D., is an American
aerospace engineer, retired U.S. Air Force officer and
fighter pilot, and former NASA astronaut, who is
the first African American and the second person of
African descent to go to space.
A distinguished U.S. Air Force Reserve Officers’
Training Corps member in college, he joined the U.S.
Air Force and served in the Vietnam War. Flying more
than 140 combat missions, he won several medals,
including the Vietnam Cross of Gallantry with Palm.
After the war, Bluford enrolled at the Air Force Institute
of Technology, where he received a master’s degree in
aerospace engineering in 1974. He went on to earn a
Ph.D. in the same subject in 1978, the same year that
he was picked for the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration’s space program.
Guion S. Bluford made history on August 30, 1983, when
he became the first African American to experience
space travel. Bluford was a mission specialist aboard
the space shuttle Challenger. He conducted several
experiments during the mission, which included 98
Earth orbits in 145 hours and ended on September
5, 1983, when the spacecraft landed at Edwards Air
Force Base in California.
Bluford later joined crews of three other space
missions: He boarded Challenger again in October
1985 for a mission that included 111 Earth orbits in
169 hours and concluded the following month, when
Challenger returned to Edwards Air Force Base.
His last two missions, in 1991 and 1992, were both
completed aboard the orbiter Discovery.
Source: biography.com/people/guion-s-bluford-213031
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