Sixty-one years since he was selected but eventually went on to become the first Black astronaut, Ed Dwight finally reached space in a Blue Origin rocket – and set another record.
Sunday at 10:37 am. Jeff Bezos’ space company launched its NS-25 mission from West Texas, marking Blue Origin’s first crewed space flight since 2022 when it was a New Shepard rocket. based due to a mid-flight failure.
On board were six crew members, including Dwight, a retired US Air Force captain who, at age 90, now becomes the oldest person to reach the edge of space.
In 1961, Dwight was selected by President John F Kennedy to train as an astronaut at the Aerospace Research Pilot School, but ultimately was not selected for the Nasa Astronaut Corps.
Since entering private life in 1966, Dwight spent a decade as an entrepreneur before turning to sculpture to honor Black history, Blue Origin said on his website. Dwight has created large-scale monuments to several major black figures, including Martin Luther King Jr, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, and has installed more than 130 of his public works in museums and public spaces across the US and Canada.
“I had no intention of being an astronaut. It was the last thing on my bucket list,” Dwight told a 2023 National Geographic documentary, The Space Race. “But as soon as I was given the challenge, everything changed.”
Dwight’s seat was sponsored by Space for Humanity, a non-profit organization dedicated to expanding space access.
Dwight becomes the oldest person to fly to the edge of space, surpass the record set by actor William Shatner who flew on another Blue Origin flight in October 2021.
The Blue Origin flights pass the 62 mile high Karman Line, an internationally accepted boundary of space.
The late John Glenn, a former astronaut and Ohio senator, still holds the record for the oldest person to enter Earth’s orbit. In 1998 Glenn was send into space at the age of 77 via the Discovery spacecraft.
After the capsule’s landing, Dwight exited the capsule, pumped his fist in the air and said: “I thought I really didn’t need it in my life but now I need it in my life. I am ecstatic… It was a life changing experience. Everyone should do it.”
Other crew members include venture capitalist Mason Angel, craft brewery founder Sylvain Chiron, software engineer Kenneth Hess, retired CPA Carol Schaller and pilot Gopi Thotakura.
In recent years, space tourism, largely led by billionaires including Bezos, Elon Musk and Richard Branson, has grown rapidly expanded.
Last August, the space travel company Virgin Galactic, founded by Branson, successfully flew six tourists including the first mother-daughter duo in a suborbital flight that allowed passengers to see the curvature of the Earth.
Meanwhile, in 2021, Musk’s SpaceX launched the world’s first “amateur astronaut” crew on a private flight to orbit the Earth for three days, a journey that mission commander Jared Isaacman describe as a “heck of a ride” after landing.
