Mae Jemison aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour during STS-47 preparing to deploy the lower body negative pressure (LBNP) apparatus. Photo Credit: Wikipedia

Not only has Mae Jemison been an astronaut, but she’s also played one on T.V.’s Star Trek – the first time that’s happened in the television show’s long history. However, being a trailblazer is nothing new for Mae Carol Jemison.

When Jemison was born in Decatur, Alabama on October 17, 1956, the idea of man reaching the stars was still in the realm of science fiction. For a young black woman, the idea was even further out than that, particularly during an era in the United States in which African-Americans were still struggling to have the basic human dignities like drinking from the same water fountain as whites.

However, Jemison – who moved to Chicago with her family when she was three years old – was always looking to do more than the world permitted. One thing that always intrigued her was the idea of going into space, and she watched the first moon landing in 1969 with fascination.

In school, Jemison studied chemical engineering, African-American studies, and received her medical degree from Cornell University. She worked for the Peace Corps, but never forgot her dream of going into space.

Fortunately, for Jemison, the world was changing. Doors that had been closed to African-Americans for so long were finally opening, and the notion of a black woman in space was finally not only possible, but probable. In October 1985, she applied for admission to the NASA astronaut training program.

However, the ink was barely dry on her application when the space shuttle Challenger exploded in January 1986. As NASA tried to figure out what had gone so horribly wrong, they shut down the entire astronaut program.

The program began again in October 1986, and Jemison, not discouraged by the disaster, once again submitted her name. In February 1987 she received word that she had been selected – one of 15 people out of 2,000 that applied. She was also the first African-American woman ever accepted.

Now the training, training, and more training began. The training stretched out into years, but Jemison never gave up hope. Finally, on September 12, 1992, when the space shuttle Endeavour took off for outer space, she became the first African-American woman to ever go into space. Typical of her pioneering nature, she was also NASA’s first science mission specialist.

On board the shuttle Jemison worked on a variety of scientific experiments, including one involving frog eggs fertilized in a gravity-free environment. She returned to earth on September 20, 1992, and possibly could have gone on more space flights. However, she resigned from NASA in March 1993 to form the Jemison Group, Inc., a company involved with marrying technology to daily life.

In 1993, Jemison appeared in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, becoming the first real astronaut to appear on the show. She founded the Dorothy Jemison Foundation for Excellence, a company called BioSentient Corporation, teaches at Cornell University, and helped to promote African-Americans and women getting involved in science.

Mae Jemison is still reaching for the stars.

Sources

1. American Women of Medicine by Russell Roberts

2. www.drmae.com

Written by Russell Roberts