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Mae Jemison, First African American Woman in Space

Astronaut Mae Jemison
Mae Jemison was the first African Ameican woman in space.

Mae Jemison is an engineer, physician and former NASA astronaut. In this image, she looks out the aft flight deck ports on Space Shuttle Endeavour’s STS-47 mission in 1992. She was the first African American woman in space.

Jemison was selected for the astronaut program in June 1987. On her first flight, she was the science mission specialist on STS-47 Spacelab-J. The mission, which was a cooperative one between the U.S. and Japan, included 44 life science and materials processing experiments. Jemison was a co-investigator on the bone cell research experiment flown on the mission. In completing her first space flight, Jemison logged 190 hours, 30 minutes, 23 seconds in space.

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Image Credit: NASA