More than 60 years after Edward Dwight was chosen to be the first Black astronaut, only to see his place in the history of space exploration taken and deferred by the specter of racism and politics, he went to space on Sunday morning.
After landing, at the end of a flight that lasted 9 minutes and 53 seconds, Mr. Dwight stood on the steps outside the door of the crew capsule, raised his arms in the air and said, “Long time coming.”Minutes later, standing outside the capsule, he said that the flight had been “life-changing.” He admitted that he had been saying, earlier in the day, that he didn’t need the flight in his life.
“But I lied,” he said.
Mr. Dwight, 90, was one of six people on board the Blue Origin spaceflight of the New Shepard rocket that launched on Sunday morning from a private launch site near Van Horn, Texas.
The flight made him the oldest person to ever go to space; he surpassed the actor William Shatner.
Persons:
Edward Dwight, Dwight, “, ”, William Shatner
Organizations:
Black, Shepard
Locations:
Van Horn , Texas