EXPLAINER - The fundamentals of astronomy for beginners

Ezzy Pearson celebrates the 30th anniversary of the first Black woman flying in space

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Wenraptured as Neil Armstrong took his first steps across the surface of the Moon during the Apollo landing. But there was one thing that upset her: none of the people being sent into space looked like her. Later in life, she would be the one to change that. Thirty years ago this month, on 12 September 1992, Jemison became the first Black woman to fly in space.

"As a little girl growing up on the south side of Chicago in the '60s I always knew I was going to be in space," Jemison said in a 2013 speech at Duke University.

There was, however, one Black female space-farer Jemison could turn to as a role model in her youth, albeit a fictional one: Star Trek's Lieutenant Nyota Uhura, hen Mae Jemison was 12 years old, she watched played by Nichelle Nichols. Encouraged by her example, Jemison pursued the sciences, eventually attaining her medical degree in 1981.

During her early career, Jemison served as a general practitioner, conducted relief work throughout Africa with the Peace Corps, helped research vaccines with the Centre for Disease Control and, somehow, also found time to learn Russian, Japanese and Swahili. Then in 1985, Sally Ride became the first American woman to fly in space, rekindling Jemison's long-held dreams.

"I picked up the phone. I called down to Johnson Space Center. I said 'I would like to be an astronaut'. They didn't laugh! I turned in the application," Jemison told the website The Mary Sue in 2018.