Ed Dwight, first Black US astronaut candidate, finally goes to space

VAN HORN, Texas — Ed Dwight, America’s first Black astronaut candidate, finally rocketed into space 60 years later, flying with Jeff Bezos’ rocket company on Sunday.

Dwight was an Air Force pilot when President John F. Kennedy championed him as a candidate for NASA’s early astronaut corps. But he wasn’t picked for the 1963 class.

Dwight, now 90, went through a few minutes of weightlessness with five other passengers aboard the Blue Origin capsule as it skimmed space on a roughly 10-minute flight. He called it “a life changing experience.”

“I thought I really didn’t need this in my life,” Dwight said shortly after exiting the capsule. “But, now, I need it in my life. … I am ecstatic.”

The brief flight from West Texas made Dwight the new record-holder for oldest person in space — nearly two months older than “Star Trek” actor William Shatner was when he went up in 2021.

It was Blue Origin’s first crew launch in nearly two years. The company was grounded following a 2022 accident in which the booster came crashing down but the capsule full of experiments safely parachuted to the ground. Flights resumed last December, but with no one aboard. This was Blue Origin’s seventh time flying space tourists.

Dwight, a sculptor from Denver, was joined by four business entrepreneurs from the U.S. and France and a retired accountant. Their ticket prices were not disclosed; Dwight’s seat was sponsored in part by the nonprofit Space for Humanity.

Dwight was among the potential astronauts the Air Force recommended to NASA. But he wasn’t chosen for the 1963 class, which included eventual Gemini and Apollo astronauts, including Apollo 11’s Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins.

NASA didn’t select Black astronauts until 1978, and Guion Bluford became the first African American in space in 1983. Three years earlier, the Soviets launched the first Black astronaut, Arnaldo Tamayo Mendez, a Cuban of African descent.

Dwight initially landed at IBM, then he started a construction company. In 1977, he earned his Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture from the University of Denver. Much of his work is of great figures from Black history such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Barack Obama. Several of his sculptures have been flown into space, most recently one aboard the vessel Orion. NASA named an asteroid after him.

Dwight, with a little bemusement at how fate has worked out, acknowledges he’s proud to be considered a pioneer for Black astronauts.

“It’s good for them in that they didn’t have to go through this crap that I went through. It was a goddamn distraction. It’s like wanting to have eyes in the back of your head for all the stuff that was coming at you. I had to absorb that graciously,” Dwight says. “If I talked about it — ‘Oh, crybaby! You couldn’t do this and you couldn’t do that.’ That’s what would have happened if I stepped up to the mic and complained.”

Instead, Dwight is filled with gratitude. His one recommendation is that every congressman and senator be flown on a sub-orbital flight so they can see the Earth from above. Everyone, he thinks, would realize the absurdity of racism from that height.

“I’d advise everybody to go through what I went through, and then they’d have a different view of this country and how sacred it is,” Dwight says. “We’re on this little ball flying around the galaxy.”

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.