Guion Bluford (born November 22, 1942, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.) is an astronaut who was the first African American launched into space.
Bluford received an undergraduate degree in aerospace engineering from Pennsylvania State University in 1964 and was commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Air Force, where he trained as a fighter pilot. He flew 144 combat missions during the Vietnam War. In 1978 he earned a doctorate in aerospace engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology.
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Bluford was one of 35 individuals selected in 1978 from 10,000 applicants in NASA’s first competition to become space shuttle astronauts. On August 30, 1983, he rode into Earth orbit on the shuttle orbiter Challenger on the STS-8 mission. The crew deployed INSAT-1B, an Indian communication satellite. The shuttle returned to Earth on September 5.
Bluford’s next mission, STS-61A, launched on October 30, 1985, andcarried in its cargo bay Spacelab D-1, a scientific laboratory funded by West Germany. Bluford and five other astronauts performed more than 70 experiments in Spacelab. STS-61A flew eight astronauts, which is still the record for the most people on a single spaceflight, and was Challenger’s final mission before it exploded shortly after liftoff on January 28, 1986.
STS-39 launched on April 28, 1991, and carried unclassified experiments for the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD). (Seven previous shuttle missions had been classified.) The experiments studied the atmosphere and the shuttle’s environment. The only classified portion of the mission consisted of a satellite that Bluford released from the cargo bay.
Bluford’s final mission, STS-53, launched on December 2, 1992, and was the last shuttle mission devoted to DOD experiments. The crew of Discovery deployed a classified military communication satellite. On all four flights, Bluford served as a mission specialist and spent more than 28 days in space.
In 1987 Bluford received a graduate degree in business administration from the University of Houston, Clear Lake. He left NASA in July 1993 for a private-sector career in the information technology and engineering services field.
