U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Guion S. Bluford became
the first African American to travel into space when the
space shuttle Challenger lifted off on its third mission. It
was the first night launch of a space shuttle, and many
people stayed up late to watch the spacecraft roar up
from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 2:32 a.m.

The Challenger spent six days in space, during which time
Bluford and his four fellow crew members launched a
communications satellite for the government of India,
made contact with an errant communications satellite,
conducted scientific experiments, and tested the shuttle’s
robotic arm.

Guion Stewart Bluford Jr. will be 82 years old on
November 22.

At 10:56 p.m. EDT, American astronaut Neil Armstrong, 240,000
miles from Earth, speaks these words to more than a billion
people listening at home: “That’s one small step for a man, one
giant leap for mankind.” Stepping off the lunar module Eagle,
Armstrong became the first human to walk on the surface of
the moon.

Sally Kristen Ride (May 26, 1951 – July 23, 2012)

On June 18, 1983,  the space shuttle Challenger was launched
into space on its second mission. On board the shuttle is Dr. 
Sally K. Ride, who as a mission specialist, became the first
American woman to travel into space. 

Ride, who had earlier pursued a professional tennis career,
answered a newspaper ad in 1977 from NASA calling for
young tech-savvy scientists who could work as mission
specialists. She died of pancreatic cancer at age 61.

              
Presidential Medal of Freedom
         (2013, posthumous)

Taken aboard Apollo 8 by Bill Anders, this iconic picture
shows Earth peeking out from beyond the lunar surface
as the first crewed spacecraft circumnavigated the Moon,
with astronauts Anders, Frank Borman, and Jim Lovell
aboard. (Willian Anders/NASA)

FRIDAY HARBOR, Wash. (AP) — Retired Maj. Gen. William
Anders, the former Apollo 8 astronaut who took the iconic
“Earthrise” photo showing the planet as a shadowed blue
marble from space in 1968, was killed Friday when the plane
he was piloting alone plummeted into the waters off the San
Juan Islands in Washington state. He was 90.

William Alison Anders
(October 17, 1933 – June 7, 2024)

On June 3, 1965, 120 miles above the Earth, Major Edward H.
White II opened the hatch of the Gemini 4 and steps out of the
capsule, becoming the first American astronaut to walk in
space. Attached to the craft by a 25-foot tether and controlling
his movements with a hand-held oxygen jet-propulsion gun,
White remained outside the capsule for just over 20 minutes. 

White had been preceded by Soviet cosmonaut Aleksei A.
Leonov, who on March 18, 1965, was the first man ever to 
walk in space.

     
     
     
     
   
Edward Higgins White II 
(November 14, 1930 – January 27, 1967