I was the first Black man to walk in space. My career as an astronaut was hard for my family.
In 1995, he became the first African American to do a space walk.
He attributes his success to education, and his foundation supports STEM for kids.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Dr. Bernard Harris, author of "Embracing Infinite Possibilities: Letting Go Of Fear To Reach Your Highest Potential". It has been edited for length and clarity.
I was one of the original Star Trek enthusiasts. I was about 10 when the show debuted, and I would rush home each week to watch a new episode. My imagination ran wild with the idea of space and being in space. Then, when I was 13, NASA landed on the moon. When Neil Armstrong said those famous words — "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" — it really set my passion off.
I studied medicine, always with the goal of becoming an astronaut. In 1990, when I was about 34, I was selected for the astronaut program.
Over the next four years, I flew twice into space and became the first Black man to do a space walk.
Many people don't realize that the space shuttle weighs 5 million pounds. To haul that into space, we light five engines that produce 7.5 million pounds of thrust. Once those are ignited, you're leaving the planet in a hurry.
The first time I went to space, my daughter was about 8 months old. Her mom — my life partner — had the hardest job, raising our daughter and my three stepchildren. My work took away from family time.
When it was time to launch, my family watched nervously, hoping everything went right. Inside the shuttle, I was laser-focused on making sure everything went right, so I didn't have time to worry.
Later, when the hatch opened for my space walk, I felt like I was falling, just for a second. My brain expected to feel gravity's pull, but after a moment, I adjusted to the floating sensation.
I was tethered to a robotic arm 35 feet above the space shuttle. Below, I could see the shuttle and the Earth beyond that. Surrounding it all was the clearest view of the Milky Way galaxy that you could ever imagine.
It was an incredible view for a human. I was struck by the silence. With no air to transmit sound, space is completely quiet. Floating there, I had a great sense of peace. It was even more wonderful than I expected.
The year after that walk, I left NASA, but continued to work around the space industry. I also practiced medicine and saw patients at community clinics. That's been an important way for me to give back.
I've had experiences that very few people get, particularly people of color. Part of my legacy is to translate that experience and use it to create awareness here on Earth. That means sharing my story and also helping create opportunities for other people to follow in my footsteps.
I founded The Harris Foundation to focus on that legacy. Our work is structured around three pillars of success: education, health, and wealth.
Health is important to me, as a physician, and I want everyone to have access to quality healthcare. In order to participate equally in the American dream, we need to build wealth, not only individually but generationally. My family was poor when I was a child, but today I have built a great deal of wealth. I hope to help others do the same.
Doing so starts with education. My father only had an 11th-grade education, but my mother's college degree gave her power. It changed not only her life, but mine. I may not have been so successful if she hadn't had her education. I've seen how education can change the trajectory of a person and their descendants.
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When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. "That Mars is habitable by beings of some sort or other is as certain as it is uncertain what these beings may be," wrote Percival Lowell in the early 20th century. While the theories of this well-heeled amateur astronomer might seem fanciful when viewed from 2025, given what was known at the time, a large percentage of the public found Lowell's theories about an inhabited Mars not just credible, but likely. Lowell went so far as to theorize that the planet was straddled by canals, designed and executed by hyper-intelligent beings, that would carry water from the poles to the equator of the apparently arid planet. While other astronomers had their doubts, popular notions of Mars as a colder and drier near-twin of Earth persisted for almost a half century longer, well into the 1960s. In 1953, Wernher von Braun, who would go on to design NASA's giant Saturn V moon rocket, wrote a seminal work called "The Mars Project,' the first comprehensive look at how to send people to the Red Planet. The centerpiece was a number of huge, winged gliders that would land astronauts on Mars by navigating what was then thought to be an atmosphere perhaps half the density of Earth's. More generally, contemporary maps of Mars were still based on observations from telescopes like Lowell's 24-inch refractor up to Mount Palomar's 200-inch giant reflector. But even that latter monster showed only a shimmering red blob of a planet with shifting, indistinct imagery. In short, in the mid-20th century, our understanding of Mars was still as much intuition and imagination as fact. That all changed 60 years ago on July 14, 1965, when a small spacecraft sped by the planet at a distance of just 6,118 miles (9,846 kilometers). 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These were initially represented by numeric printouts that had to be interpreted into black-and-white images, but the imaging team was impatient. They cut the numbered paper into strips, pasted them onto a backboard, and played "paint by numbers" with grease markers to create an eerily accurate first look. Once the computer-processed photographs arrived, though they were soft and indistinct, and spectroscopic and other measurements were still inexact, the combined data turned our notions about the true nature of the Red Planet on their head. Within hours, Mars had descended from Lowell's fever dreams to cold, harsh reality. Quick calculations told the story — Mars was a frigid, desert world, and those who still held to Lowell's dreams of a possible Martian empire had to concede defeat. The planet was a moon-like desert, a place of intense cratering and wide empty plains. The final blow came shortly after the flyby, when Mariner directed its radio signal through the limb of the Martian atmosphere. The atmospheric density was found to be about 1/1000th that of Earth. For the dreamers, Mars died on that day in 1965. Related Stories: — Mariner 4: NASA's 1st successful Mars mission — Mars: Everything you need to know about the Red Planet — Mars missions: A brief history But for the gathered Caltech team savoring the fuzzy pictures from Mariner 4's sprint, this was a victory. After the discovery of Venus' true nature, when a planet thought to be a swampy, humid world was revealed as a hellish place of intense pressure and searing temperatures, Mars seemed almost welcoming. And the inclusion of a TV camera on the mission added a human touch that transcended the numbers, bringing the fourth planet into living rooms worldwide. When discussing the mission a few years later, Leighton related one touching letter he received from, of all people, a milkman. It read, "I'm not very close to your world, but I really appreciate what you are doing. Keep it going." A soft-spoken Leighton said of the sentiment, "A letter from a milkman… I thought that was kind of nice." After its voyage past Mars, Mariner 4 maintained intermittent communication with JPL and returned data about the interplanetary environment for two more years. But by the end of 1967, the spacecraft had suffered close to 100 micrometeoroid impacts and was out of fuel. The mission was officially ended on Dec. 21. Since then, a multitude of spacecraft have rocketed Marsward from a variety of nations. The path to Mars is still challenging, and the U.S. leads in successes. From the Viking Mars orbiters and landers of the 1970s through the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers, which are still operating today, the Red Planet has crept from the dreadful waste seen by Mariner 4 to a place once covered in shallow oceans and with a possibly temperate atmosphere. And while we have never found any signs of Percival Lowell's high-society Martians, we may soon live in their stead.
