The first African-American space traveler is among four men and women who will be inducted into the U. S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in Titusville, Fla., on Saturday (June 5).
Guion Bluford NASA Photo
Guion Bluford, now 67, earned the distinction on Aug. 30, 1983, as he lifted off on the eighth space shuttle flight as a mission specialist. Bluford, a Philadelphia native, flew four times. He touched down on his final flight on Dec. 9, 1993.
He was selected by NASA for astronaut training in 1978. The former U. S. Air Force fighter pilot was assigned to the Air Force Flight Dynamics Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio as a development engineer when he was selected by NASA to join the astronaut corps.
After his retirement from the Air Force as a colonel, Bluford pursued a career as an aerospace executive. He currently serves on the Coalition for Space Exploration’s board of advisors.
This year’s hall of fame selections also include Ken Bowersox, Frank Culbertson and Kathy Thornton.
Ken Bowersox NASA Photo
Bowersox, now 53, served as commander of the International Space Station and led and piloted two shuttle missions to the Hubble Space Telescope, over a seven-year career with NASA that included five space flights.
The Portsmouth, Va., native was selected by NASA for astronaut training in 1987 as a Navy test pilot.
Six years later, he served as the pilot aboard Endeavour on a milestone mission for NASA, the first of five repair missions to the Hubble Space Telescope. At the time, Hubble was circling the Earth with a flaw in the primary mirror that was blurring its observations. The Endeavour crew installed corrective optics and made other upgrades that contributed to the observatory’s long life.
Bowersox commanded a second successful mission to Hubble in 1997. Five years later, he became the sixth commander of the space station. His five-and-a-half-month stay on the station included a pair of spacewalks.
Upon his return, Bowersox served as NASA’s director of flight crew operations.
Currently, Bowersox is with SpaceX, where he is participating in efforts to develop a commercial space transportation service for cargo and astronauts to the space station.
Frank Culbertson NASA Photo
Culbertson, now 61, served as the commander on two of his three space flights, including a 129-day voyage to the space station in late 2001. He joined NASA’s astronaut corps in 1984 as a Navy test pilot.
As the commander of a 10-day mission, he conducted the first night landing of a space shuttle at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Sept. 22, 1993.
Culbertson played a key role in a post-Cold War merger of U. S. and Russian space flight operations, serving as manager of NASA’s Shuttle-Mir program as well as the deputy program manager for space station operations.
During his ties to the Shuttle-Mir program, he supervised nine shuttle dockings with Russia’s former Mir space station over a 30-month period. Seven NASA astronauts visited the outpost during the period.
He left the astronaut corps in 2002.
Currently, the Charleston, S. C. native is with the Orbital Sciences Corp., where is is participating in efforts to develop a commercial space transportation service for cargo and astronauts to the space station.
Kathy Thornton NASA Photo
Kathy Thornton, now 57, participated in two of the five spacewalks carried out during the first of five missions to overhaul the Hubble Space Telescope. The December 1993 mission, flown aboard Endeavour, corrected an optical flaw that threatened to sideline the orbiting observatory.
In all, the Montgomery, Ala., native flew in space four times in the nearly 12 years she was a member of NASA’s astronaut corps. Thornton, a physicist, was selected in 1984.
During her second mission, aboard Endeavour in May 1992, Thornton and her crew mates were forced to break with their flight plan in order to rescue a satellite trapped in a low orbit. Working from inside the shuttle, she choreographed the first, three-person spacewalk. During the excursion, the three astronauts managed to hand grab the wayward Intelsat communications satellite. The spacecraft was subsequently equipped to carry out its mission.
Currently, Thornton serves as the director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Science, Mathematics and Engineering Education.