Born October 17, 1956, Decatur, Alabama
When the National Space and Aeronautics Administration’s space shuttle Endeavour was launched on September 12, 1992, Mae Jemison—one of the seven-member crew—became the first black woman to travel in space. A mission specialist or “science astronaut” on the eight-day mission, she used her medical training to perform many experiments while in orbit. On her return she was treated as something of a celebrity and held up as a role model for black youths. Overcoming the discrimination that women and minorities often face in the United States, she had fulfilled her childhood dreams. Jemison hoped that her historic journey would encourage other blacks to pursue careers in space exploration, science, and technology.
Jemison was born October 17, 1956, in Decatur, Alabama. The daughter of a maintenance worker and an elementary schoolteacher, she moved with her family to Chicago when she was three. She remembers being encouraged to spend hours in the library, reading about astronomy and other sciences. Jemison especially liked to read books about space travel and novels of science fiction. She was also a big fan of the science fiction television program Star Trek. The show’s black female officer, Lieutenant Uhura, was her particular favorite. Jemison always believed that one day she, too, would travel in space, although at that time there were no black or female astronauts.
Following high school graduation, Jemison attended Stanford University in California on a scholarship. She earned degrees in chemical engineering and Afro-American studies in 1977. She was also the first female leader of the Black Student Union there. She then enrolled at Cornell University’s Medical College in New York City. Her interest in seeing the world and helping other people led her to volunteer during summer school as a medical worker at a Cambodian refugee camp in Thailand. A grant program also allowed her to conduct health studies in the east African country of Kenya, in 1979. She earned her medical degree from Cornell in 1981.
Jemison served in the Peace Corps from 1983 to 1985. A medical officer in the west African countries of Sierra Leone and Liberia, she was in charge of the health and safety of Peace Corps volunteers and State Department employees. She also ran disease research projects. After her return to the United States, she worked as a doctor in private practice in Los Angeles, California. While there she took graduate classes in engineering and applied to NASA for admission to the astronaut program. Her first application was not accepted. But in 1987, after a second application, Jemison became one of fifteen people selected out of nearly two thousand astronaut hopefuls. She was the program’s first black woman.
Jemison spent the next year becoming a mission specialist. This required learning about the space shuttle and how it operated, and practicing how to maneuver in a weightless environment: conducting experiments, launching payloads or satellites, and walking in space. She then worked as an astronaut office representative at the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida, which involved preparing space shuttles for launch. Jemison’s first flight assignment came in 1992, when she was selected to join the crew of the Endeavour. Set to launch on September 12, the flight was a joint mission in which NASA and the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA) would conduct microgravity experiments using a manned Spacelab module. For the first time, a Japanese astronaut traveled aboard a U.S. shuttle.
More than forty experiments were conducted around-the-clock on the mission, with the crew divided into two teams. Among the projects were those investigating the effect of no gravity on living things. Test subjects included the crew, Japanese koi fish, chicken embryos, fruit flies, plant seeds, and frogs and frog eggs. Jemison was in charge of the frog embryology experiment. She fertilized the eggs of South African frogs to see if they would develop normally in space. The tadpoles looked normal.
As a medical doctor, Jemison was also in charge of the motion sickness experiment. She was the only member of the crew who did not take medicine to help combat the nausea and other symptoms that astronauts usually experience during their first days in space. Jemison was trained in biofeedback—using the conscious mind to control unconscious bodily processes, like breathing—and used meditation and relaxation to bring her pulse and temperature back to normal when she felt sick. Her other medical experiments involving weightlessness included measuring its effect on tissue growth and the loss of bone calcium.
At one point during the eight-day flight, Jemison gave a fifteen-minute talk that was transmitted live to sixty children gathered at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. “I’m closer to the stars,” she told them, “somewhere I’ve always dreamed to be.” On the shuttle mission she brought a number of items that held special meaning for her, including a proclamation from the Chicago public school system, where she had taken her first steps toward outer space. Also among her things was a flag from the Organization of African Unity. As a student of African history, the astronaut knew that many black people had explored the heavens before her. “Ancient African empires—Mali, Songhai, Egypt—had scientists, astronomers,” she said in a published report. “The fact is that space and its resources belong to all of us, not to any one group.”
The shuttle Endeavour landed on the runway of the Kennedy Space Center on September 20, 1992. It had orbited the earth 127 times and had traveled 3,271,844 miles.
Jemison left NASA in 1993 to pursue her interest in promoting science education for minorities. She was also interested in bringing advanced technologies to underdeveloped countries. She founded a company called the Jemison Group, which develops and sells such advanced technologies. The former astronaut lives in Houston, Texas, with her cat, Sneeze.
Astronaut Speaks In Honor of Dr. King. [Online] Available http://ccf.arc.nasa.gov/dx/archives/astronauts/astronaut_speaks.html, January 11, 1989.
Engelbert, Phillis. Astronomy & Space: From the Big Bang to the Big Crunch. Detroit: U•X•L, 1997.
“The Fifty Most Beautiful People in the World.” People. May 3, 1993: 145.
Mae C. Jemison: Astronaut, Physician. [Online] Available http://www.lib.lsu.edu/lib/chem/display/jemison.html, February 2, 1997.
Mae C. Jemison Academy. [Online] Available http://www.gsu.edu/~usgacmx/jemison_info.html, May 1, 1997.
Mae Jemison. [Online] Available http://sun3.lib.uci.edu/~afrexh/Jemison.html, July 8, 1997.
STS 47. [Online] Available http://vib.kuaero.kyoto-u.ac.jp/space_and_aeronautics/USA/sts-47.html, July 3, 1995.
This is the complete article, containing 1,053 words
(approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page).
