Letter on Black History Month from GUSI

Happy Black History Month!

As this February winds to a close, we’d like to take the time to honor some notable Black individuals who have contributed indispensably, across disciplines and organizations, to America’s success in space. We also want to acknowledge the many Black individuals contributing to public and private-sector organizations working often without the recognition they deserve.

Creola Katherine Johnson was a mathematician at NASA who, battling racism and sexism, calculated orbital mechanics during the agency’s early days and later missions to enable the success of Project Mercury, the Apollo missions, the Space Shuttle Program, and plans for missions to Mars. Her work, as well as the work of Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan, was popularized in the movie Hidden Figures. President Barack Obama awarded Johnson the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 201, stating “Katherine G. Johnson refused to be limited by society's expectations of her gender and race while expanding the boundaries of humanity's reach.”

Mae C. Jemison was the first African American female astronaut who in 1992 became the first African American woman in space. At NASA, Jemison worked on the space shuttle Endeavor on mission STS-47 as a mission specialist, spending over 190 hours in space. Her work focused on experiments related to motion-sickness and weightlessness in space. Prior to becoming an astronaut in 1988, she was a chemical engineer and a doctor and has since taught at universities and founded several organizations related to science, and future opportunities in space.

Guion Stewart Bluford Jr., an aerospace engineer, and a U.S. Air Force pilot was the first Black American in space. Though the title of first Black American Astronaut belongs to Robert Henry Jackson Jr., Bluford was the first to make it outside of Earth’s Atmosphere. He first launched with the STS-8 mission launched in August 1983 and later launched with STS-61-A, STS-39, and STS-53, accumulating a total of more than 688 hours in space. He first joined the Corps in the class of 1978, alongside two other accomplished Black Astronauts, Ronald McNair and Frederick Gregory. Gregory was the first to command a spacecraft. McNair gave the ultimate sacrifice in the Challenger disaster in 1986. Bluford was inducted into the International Space Hall of Fame in 1997, the United States Astronaut Hall of Fame in 2010, and the Naval Aviation Hall of Fame in 2019.

More recently, Victor J. Glover Jr., an engineer, a U.S. Naval Aviator, U.S. Senate Legislative Fellow, and NASA astronaut made history as one of the first astronauts to fly on a commercial spacecraft in 2021. He serves as pilot and second-in-command on the Resilience SpaceX Crew Dragon.

Vanessa E. Wyche is a deputy director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center. In this role, she oversees almost 11,000 employees and has managed a range of vital NASA missions, including aspects of the Space Shuttle Program and the Exploration Integration and Science Directorate.

GUSI acknowledges the importance of increasing the diversity within the space community, an industry marred by a history of exclusion. We encourage everyone to read Co-Founder & Co-President Brian Britt’s piece on the moral and practical importance of diversity within the space industry here: https://www.guspaceinitiative.org/contentmaster/the-value-of-diversity-in-the-space-industry. It is one of GUSI’s foundational aims to create an inclusive space community at Georgetown. We encourage the rest of the space community to commit to doing the same.