These are the only five Black women to have ever traveled into space

Stephanie Wilson

First Travel into Space: July 4, 2006

Stephanie Diana Wilson is an American engineer and NASA astronaut born on September 27, 1966, in Boston, Massachusetts. She attended Taconic High School Pittsfield and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in engineering science in 1988 from Harvard University and a Master of Science in aerospace engineering in 1992 from the University of Texas. Wilson is the second African-American woman to travel into space.

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She flew to space aboard three different Space Missions and spent a total of 42 days, 23 hours, and 46 minutes in space, making her the second African-American female astronaut, after Jessica Watkins, to spend a long time in space. Wilson was part of the STS-121 Space Mission (July 4 – 17, 2006) to the International Space Station. She was part of the STS-120 Space Shuttle Mission (October 23 – November 7, 2007), a 6.25 million mile mission to the International Space Station (ISS) that delivered the Harmony Connecting Module to the ISS and reconfigured the P6 truss. She also flew in the STS-131 (April 5 – 20, 2010) mission to the ISS. She is part of the Artemis team since 2017 – a team of eighteen astronauts preparing for a scheduled return to the moon by 2024.