Ed Dwight is truly a modern - solar day Renaissance man . At the age of 90 years 8 months and 10 days , he was able-bodied to tote up another achievement to his illustrious and wide-ranging CV . He got to blank space , traveling on a suborbital spaceflight , Blue Origin ’s New Shepard NS-25 . He tucker out actorWilliam Shatnerto the record of the oldest person who has ever been to infinite .
Dwight is atalented sculptor – with 129 memorial sculpture and over 18,000 gallery piece under his belted ammunition – as well as an generator . He graduatedcum laudein aeronautical engineering and has a past as a test pilot light which bring in him the rank of captain in the US Air Force . And his acquisition and talent took him one measure away from becoming NASA ’s first Black cosmonaut .
In 1961 , he was the first African - American to go into the Aerospace Research Pilot School , the pre - astronaut training school from which NASA piece astronauts . However , he was not take and he left the Air Force . The Guardianreported that he said that “ racial politics forced him out of NASA and back into the regular policeman corp . ”
His seat on NS-25 was paid for by Space for Humanity , a non - profit that aims to dilate human accession to distance by sending interesting citizenry to outer space to experience the overview impression . The residue of the crew included Mason Angel , Sylvain Chiron , Kenneth L. Hess , Carol Schaller , and Gopi Thotakura .
New Shepardhas pilot 25 time although not always crew . To particular date , 37 citizenry have been brought to beyond the Karman lineage , the internationally recognized ( but truly arbitrary ) edge of space locate 100 kilometers ( 61 international nautical mile ) above sea grade . This was the first New Shepard Crewed flight since August 2022 .
An uncrewed trajectory in September 2022 know an engine failure and then a fervidness , run aground the fleet . Uncrewed flight resumed last December .
This latest flight live on for almost 10 minutes , and the hoi polloi on board see several minutes of lightness in their ascent .
Their declension had a little drama as well . Only two of the three parachutes really deployed . While launching commentator assured that the abridgment could land safely with just two , it might have made for a slightly toilsome landing place than if all three functioned .
