Ed Dwight poses for a photo during the Winter Television Critics Association press tour to promote the National Geographic documentary “The Space Race” on Thursday, February.
Chris Pizzero/Invision/AP
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Chris Pizzero/Invision/AP
Ed Dwight poses for a photo during the Winter Television Critics Association press tour to promote the National Geographic documentary “The Space Race” on Thursday, February.
Chris Pizzero/Invision/AP
Ed Dwight, who nearly became America’s first black astronaut six decades ago, was 90 years old when he joined five astronauts on Sunday for the first time in space aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket.
The flawless liftoff from a West Texas launch site marked the first passenger flight in nearly two years for the commercial space venture run by billionaire Jeff Bezos. The roughly 10-minute suborbital flight made Dwight the oldest person in history to fly into space.he defeated StarCraft Actor William Shatner preceded him in receiving the honor by a few months. Shatner was several months younger when he blasted off aboard the New Shepard rocket in 2021.
Dwight shares a capsule with venture capitalist Mason Angel; Sylvain Chiron, French craft brewery founder; entrepreneur Kenneth Hess; pilot Gopi Thotakura and retired accountant Carol Schaller.
The rocket reached an altitude of more than 347,000 feet, crossing the 330,000-foot Karman Line, an imaginary line that represents the boundary of space. They experienced some brief moments of weightlessness.
Shortly after, the New Shepard booster landed in a dust cloud near the launch site. The crew capsule landed under two of the three parachutes, with one of the extra parachutes failing to fully deploy.
After emerging from the space capsule, Dwight happily waved his two fists in the air to celebrate his victory.
“Awesome! Life changing experience. Everyone needs to do this!” he said.
“I didn’t know I needed this in my life, but I need it in my life now,” he said.
He said the separation of the rocket and capsule was “more dynamic” than he expected.
In the 1960s, Air Force Captain Dwight quickly entered spaceflight after then-President John F. Kennedy requested a black astronaut. Although Dwight graduated from the first half of a test pilot school, he was subsequently selected as an astronaut, a story he detailed in his autobiography, Soaring on the Wings of Dreams: The Untold Story of America’s First Black Astronaut Candidate.
After leaving the Air Force, Dwight went on to become a renowned sculptor, specializing in portraits of African-American historical figures.
In an interview with NPR last month, Dwight said he was surprised to receive a call from Blue Origin asking him to take the flight. “They called me and asked me if I was interested. Of course I said yes,” he said.
In a separate conversation with NPR in 2022, Dwight said he had never faced such competition at the Aerospace Research Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base in California, where he trained as a test pilot in the early 1960s.
“They would blow out your eardrums and see how long it would take you to recover,” Dwight recalled. “They do some fascinating things to your body, to see how far they can stretch it before it breaks.”
The cost of Dwight’s tickets is being split between Blue Origin, Humanity in Space and the Jason and Jamie Robinson Family Foundation. (Jaison Robinson was on a previous Blue Origin flight and is on the NPR Foundation board.)
The first crewed flight of New Shepard launched in July 2020 and included Bezos, his brother Mark Bezos, pilot Wally Funk and 18 Year-old Dutch citizen Oliver Daemen, who at the time of the launch was the youngest person ever to fly into space.
