Ronald Erwin McNair
McNair was born on October 21, 1950, and died on January 28, 1986.
An American NASA astronaut and physicist, McNair died during the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger on mission STS-51-L, in which he was serving as one of three mission specialists in a crew of seven.
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A receiver of a Ph.D. degree in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1976, McNair was selected as one of 35 applicants from a pool of ten thousand for the NASA astronaut program in 1978.
He flew on STS-41-B aboard Challenger from February 3 to February 11, 1984, as a mission specialist, becoming the second African American and the first Bahá’í to fly in space.
