Victor Glover: First black astronaut on NASA's extended space station
- Nasa has made history again, this time with the first black astronaut on the International Space Station
- He launched aboard a SpaceX rocket on Sunday on a six-month mission on the ISS
- He is being hailed as one of Nasa's "hidden figures" as he makes history in space
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Navy commander, Victor Glover, has been in the astronaut programme since 2013 after working as a test pilot.
He will be the first black astronaut to live on the International Space Station (ISS). This will be a world-first at the frontier of human exploration.
Glover's achievement is highlighted by NASA which is increasing the exposure of its "hidden figures", marginalised groups of people who were not given credit for their contribution to the space programme in the past.
Source: Facebook
Glover modestly acknowledged his role in the historic mission according to New York Times.
“It is something to be celebrated once we accomplish it, and I am honored to be in this position and to be a part of this great and experienced crew,” he said. “And I look forward to getting up there and doing my best to make sure, you know, we are worthy of all the work that’s been put into setting us up for this mission. You know, unlike the election — that is in the past or receding in the past — this mission is still ahead of me. So, let’s get there, and I’ll talk to you after I get on board.”
Glover is not just a Navy commander, he is incredibly intelligent having earned three degrees in the past three years.
They left on Sunday, Glover along with three other brave explorers heading into the void of space. Their mission is scheduled to last six months.
They launched aboard Elon Musk's SpaceX Dragon, the capsule has a brilliant name Resilience. The new launch system is going to revolutionise space travel as huge advances are being made, with brave men and women like Glover at the forefront.
Earlier, Briefly.co.za reported that Elon Musk's SpaceX has launched four astronauts into orbit in a NASA mission to keep the International Space Station (ISS) fully staffed. The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has the SpaceX Crew Dragon on board.
Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker, and Soichi Noguchi are the NASA astronauts aboard the capsule that is expected to dock with the ISS on Monday at 11pm ET (Tuesday, 6am CAT).
The crew will be in orbit for 27 hours as the spacecraft manoeuvres toward its destination. NASA first planned to launch on Saturday but due to bad weather, they delayed the take-off to Sunday evening.
In other news, South African-born billionaire Elon Musk is reportedly richer than Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerburg. According to reports, Musk gained another $12 billion (R188 billion) in wealth overnight.
This is due to the announcement of Tesla's addition to the S&P 500 (a stock market index that measures the stock performance of 500 large companies). Musk's network is sitting on $114 billion while Zuckerberg's is $101.7 billion.
Musk is also currently the highest-paid executive on the planet and according to reports, he doesn't draw a salary from Tesla.
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Source: Briefly News
