Portal:Pennsylvania/Selected Biography/2

Guion "Guy" Bluford, Junior (born November 22, 1942) is a retired Colonel, from the United States Air Force and a former NASA Astronaut. He participated in four Space Shuttle flights between 1983 and 1992. In 1983, as a member of the crew of the space shuttle Challenger on mission STS-8, Bluford became the first African American in space. (Note that the first person of African ancestry in space was the Cuban cosmonaut Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez.)

Bluford was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He received a BS in aerospace engineering from the Pennsylvania State University in 1964; a Master of Science in aerospace engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology in 1974; a PhD in aerospace engineering with a minor in laser physics from the Air Force Institute of Technology in 1978, and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Houston–Clear Lake in 1987. (Read more...)