{"id":227615,"date":"2025-10-27T05:27:18","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T05:27:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/227615\/"},"modified":"2025-10-27T05:27:18","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T05:27:18","slug":"first-black-astronaut-candidate-ed-dwight-becomes-oldest-man-to-fly-to-space-at-age-90","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/227615\/","title":{"rendered":"First Black astronaut candidate Ed Dwight becomes oldest man to fly to space at age 90"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When Ed Dwight (USA<\/a>) was four years old, he built a toy aeroplane\u00a0out of orange crates in the backyard of his home in Kansas City, Kansas.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nearly 28 years later, upon the personal recommendation of President John F. Kennedy, he became the first Black American to enter the Air Force training program from which NASA selected astronauts.<\/p>\n

But it wasn\u2019t until 19 May 2024 \u2013 over six decades after he was first recruited as an astronaut \u2013 that the accomplished nonagenarian finally got to space.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

As part of Blue Origin<\/a>\u2019s NS-25 mission, Ed Dwight<\/a> became the oldest man to fly in zero gravity last year at the age of 90 years and 253 days old. He took off from Van Horn, Texas, USA on a New Shepard rocket<\/a>, which spent about 10 minutes in orbit after reaching a maximum altitude of 65.7 miles (105 km) and returning to Earth.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought I didn’t need this in my life,\u201d Ed said to the BBC after touchdown<\/a>, \u201cbut I lied. I really did need it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The senior\u2019s trip to the stars was a long time coming \u2013 while growing up in a racially segregated town not far from an airbase, the first time he saw a Black pilot was on the front page of a newspaper<\/a> he was delivering as a paperboy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so that encouraged me,\u201d he said to NPR. \u201cWhen I saw that guy standing on the front of that plane, I wasn’t concerned about him getting shot down; I was more rapt about the idea of him flying a jet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Want to read more out-of-this-world stories about space travellers? Check out our Science and Technology section!<\/a><\/p>\n

In 1953, Ed joined the US Air Force and completed pilot training, while grabbing an Aeronautical Engineering degree from Arizona State University on the way. But his life changed in 1961 when he received a letter from the Pentagon \u2013 signed by President John F. Kennedy \u2013 asking him if he’d like to become the first Black astronaut.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I thought, \u2018Hell no.\u2019 Why in the world would I ruin a wonderful career to go and hang out with these guys who didn’t know what the hell they were doing at the beginning?\u201d said Ed to PBS<\/a>. \u201cNASA was only two-years-old and they were talking about putting a Black guy in space?\u201d<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, Ed was supremely qualified, and he ended up accepting the offer. He went through astronaut training as part of the military’s Manned Orbiting Laboratory programme, and was placed eighth as a contender for NASA’s Astronaut Group 3 in October 1963. Along the way, he faced intense public scrutiny and racism as he was announced by the Kennedy administration as the first Black astronaut.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d advise everybody to go through what I went through, and then they\u2019d have a different view of this country and how sacred it is,\u201d Ed said. \u201cWe\u2019re on this little ball flying around the galaxy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, his hopes were dashed, however, when the President was assassinated just a month later \u2013 and he lost all the government support that once nearly elevated him to the stars.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe day the president got killed, my life changed,” he said. \u201c22 November 1963 was literally the end of our project.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Despite the fact that the US had a qualified Black astronaut candidate in the 1960s, it took nearly 20 years for NASA to send someone to space who was not white, male, or from a military background. Guion \u201cGuy\u201d Bluford \u2013 also an aerospace engineer and USAF pilot \u2013 first took to the skies on an Orbiter Challenger, and officially took the title as the first African-American astronaut to travel into space (male) in 1983.<\/p>\n

Yet even though he missed his chance at space flight in the 20th century, Ed was not bogged down by disappointment \u2013 instead, he threw himself into a successful career as a sculptor<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the mid-1970s, he received a Master of Fine Arts, and began working on pieces that depicted Black history: from slavery to emancipation, the American West to the evolution of Jazz, and various other political and cultural figures.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His work was displayed all over the US \u2013 from the Smithsonian to churches and HBCUs \u2013 and it\u2019s entirely possible that Ed\u2019s aerospace legacy would have been overshadowed by his artistic achievements.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That is, until Space for Humanity<\/a> offered to finally send him to space.<\/p>\n

\"Ed<\/p>\n

Image credit: Blue Origin<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was in our sights,\u201d said Antonio Peronace, Space for Humanity’s Executive Director, to the BBC. The non-profit works to expand access to space travel for everyone, and paid for Ed\u2019s flight to achieve his long-awaited goal.<\/p>\n

\u201cOccasionally we select an individual that doesn’t go through the application process \u2013 like Ed Dwight \u2013 where we know that their story has been and or will be very impactful to individuals,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Ed Dwight (USA) was four years old, he built a toy aeroplane\u00a0out of orange crates in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":227616,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[96921,4355,96919,96920,3795,96922,90,416,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-227615","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-black-astronauts","9":"tag-blue-origin","10":"tag-ed-dwight","11":"tag-first-black-american-astronaut-candidate","12":"tag-guinness-world-records","13":"tag-oldest-man-to-fly-in-zero-gravity","14":"tag-science","15":"tag-space","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}