Guion Bluford, in full Guion Stewart Bluford, Jr., (born November 22, 1942, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.), an astronaut who was the first African American launched into space.
Bluford received an undergraduate degree in aerospace engineering from Pennsylvania State University in 1964 and was commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Air Force, where he trained as a fighter pilot. He flew 144 combat missions during the Vietnam War. In 1978 he earned a doctorate in aerospace engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology.
Bluford was one of 35 individuals selected in 1978 from 10,000 applicants in NASA’s first competition to become space shuttle astronauts. On August 30, 1983, he rode into Earth orbit on the shuttle orbiter Challenger; he subsequently flew on three additional shuttle missions between 1985 and 1992. Bluford served as a mission specialist on all four flights, with responsibility for a variety of in-orbit tasks, including the deployment of an Indian communications satellite as well as the operation and deployment of scientific and classified military experiments and payloads.
Guion S. Bluford, Jr., exercising on a treadmill aboard the U.S. space shuttle Challenger in Earth orbit, 1983.
In 1987 Bluford received a graduate degree in business administration from the University of Houston, Clear Lake. He left NASA in July 1993 for a private-sector career in the information technology and engineering services field.