Cold Open

It’s May 1966 at a television studio in Los Angeles, California.

33-year-old Nichelle Nichols taps buttons on a complex-looking instrument panel and peers intently at the screen flashing in front of her. Nichelle knows that the buttons don’t actually do anything. The console is just a prop. But Nichelle tries to look busy, pretending that she’s at the controls of a futuristic starship.

For the last seven years, Nichelle has carved out a career as a stage and screen performer. Most of her roles have been minor, but a few weeks ago, Nichelle got her big break. She was chosen to play Lieutenant Uhura on a new science fiction show, Star Trek. But Nichelle's casting isn’t just a big moment for her. It also marks one of the first times that a Black woman has featured in the main cast of an American television show. Now, Nichelle is about to shoot her very first scene.

As the director calls for filming to begin, Nichelle puts her finger to her ear as though listening to a transmission. She looks across the set and delivers her first line on the new show.

NICHELLE: Hailing frequencies open, sir.

Nichelle takes a breath, but before she can utter her next line… the director halts filming and the crew hustles onto the set. Nichelle looks around in confusion, wondering why the take ended so abruptly.

She checks a script that’s been left near a camera and notices that her next few lines of dialogue have been marked through with a red pen. Nichelle's first contribution to the show has been cut to just four words. Though she's disappointed, she takes her place back at the console… and filming resumes, with Nichelle left to furiously bash buttons in the background, taking out her frustration on the set.

Over the course of filming Star Trek’s first season, Nichelle Nichols will become increasingly irritated by her limited lines of dialogue—and she’ll threaten to quit when she hears rumors that she’s been sidelined because studio executives don’t want a Black woman as one of the show’s stars. But Nichelle will stick it out, and Lieutenant Uhura will eventually become one of Star Trek’s most-beloved characters. And among her fans will be a little Black girl from Chicago, who’ll grow up to follow the example of Lieutenant Uhura and take her own pioneering trip into the stars on September 12th, 1992.

Introduction

From Noiser and Airship, I’m Lindsay Graham and this is History Daily.

History is made every day. On this podcast—every day—we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world.

Today is September 12th, 1992: The First Black Woman in Space.

Act One: Starship Bound

It’s January 1987 in Los Angeles, California, 21 years after the premiere of Star Trek on television.

30-year-old Mae Jemison opens the door to her apartment as her cat winds its way through her legs. Mae’s just put in a long shift as a doctor and taken an aerobics class after work, so she suspects her cat is as hungry as she is tired. But thoughts of feeding her pet are quickly forgotten when Mae sorts through her mail—because one envelope is from NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Two decades ago, when she was 9 years old, Mae watched Star Trek’s debut on television—and she instantly fell in love with Lieutenant Uhura and the idea of space travel. Ever since Mae has harbored an ambition to become an astronaut herself and she’s spent more than a decade building a resume that NASA’s administrators would take seriously. Mae completed high school early at the age of 16 and then attended Stanford University. She majored in chemical engineering but also embraced her Black heritage by taking extra classes in African Studies. After graduating from Stanford, Mae then went on to medical school in New York and had placements in Thailand, Cuba, Cambodia, and East Africa. Then after stints with the Peace Corps and the Centers for Disease Control, Mae took a job in Los Angeles. Only then did she decide she was ready to apply for NASA’s astronaut program.

But despite her impressive list of achievements, Mae knew it would still be difficult. It was hard enough for anyone to become an astronaut, but Mae faced an extra barrier. NASA only had a handful of Black astronauts, and all of them were men. They had never employed a Black woman as an astronaut before. Still, Mae thought of Lieutenant Uhura and sent her application in.

Mae’s timing was unfortunate though. Soon after her application was received, the space shuttle Challenger exploded on takeoff, and America’s crewed space program was grounded. Plans to appoint a new cohort of astronauts were shelved for a year, meaning that Mae had to compete against two years’ worth of applicants, rather than just one.

So now, Mae’s hands tremble as she opens the letter from NASA and quickly reads it. After a moment, she punches the air. She’s made the shortlist. Out of two thousand applicants, Mae is one of just a hundred invited to Houston for the next round of selection.

A few weeks later, Mae travels to the Johnson Space Center in Texas for a program of physical examinations. They checked Mae’s eyesight, her muscle strength, her bone health is examined in detail by x-ray. And she’s placed in isolation to see how she copes psychologically. Each test is more demanding than the last, but Mae is confident that she’s fit and healthy.

But Mae’s world comes crashing down after one particular test. The flight surgeon informs Mae that they may have detected a heart murmur—a condition that if confirmed will bar her from flying in space. While waiting for further tests, Mae sinks into a depression. She fears that a heart condition she knew nothing about has ended her dream of going to space. But a few days later, the doctor delivers better news. What they’ve detected is just a “flow murmur”—a harmless condition in which the blood makes an unusual sound as it moves around the body. She’s still fit to fly.

When the selection tests are complete, Mae returns home. The odds are still against her. NASA will choose just fifteen new astronauts from the shortlist of 100. But after nearly being withdrawn for medical reasons, Mae feels like she’s already won just by still being in the running.

But then eventually, Mae gets the call she’s dreamed of since she was a little girl. NASA has selected her as one of the fifteen. When the news is announced a few weeks later, Mae is one of two women among the latest intake of NASA astronauts—and she’s the only Black person. Unsurprisingly, the media focus on Mae the most. CBS even declares her to be one of the country’s most eligible bachelorettes thanks to her good looks and exciting new career. Mae must quickly adapt to becoming a celebrity - but she has more important things to concentrate on now.

Over the next two years, Mae completes the basic training expected of every astronaut. Then she takes residence at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where she becomes an expert in the computer software used aboard the space shuttle. She also participates in the rigorous tests ahead of every crewed launch—a job that has even greater importance after the Challenger disaster. But Mae isn’t chosen for the crew of any of the new missions and must watch shuttle after shuttle blast off without her on board.

Not until September 1989 will Mae be given the news she’s been waiting for. She’ll be selected as the science mission specialist on board the space shuttle Endeavour. After years of hard work and decades of dreaming, Mae will finally have the chance to go where no Black woman has gone before.

Act Two: Hailing Frequencies Open

It’s September 12th, 1992, on the flight deck of the space shuttle Endeavour, 160 nautical miles above the Earth, four years after Mae Jemison was selected as a trainee astronaut.

Mae looks out the window of her spacecraft, peering down at Earth. It’s a view that only 200 astronauts and cosmonauts have ever witnessed before—and none of her predecessors was a Black woman. As the shuttle orbits the Earth, Mae recognizes the city of Chicago—the place where she grew up and first dreamed of being an astronaut. From up here, all she can make out is the gray of the city and the green of the surrounding farmland. But she still knows it’s home.

Mae has been in space for just a day. On her last evening on Earth before liftoff, she spoke on the phone to actress Nichelle Nichols, who played Lieutenant Uhura in Star Trek. When Mae was selected as an astronaut, she credited Lieutenant Uhura as the inspiration behind her application. So, Nichelle soon reached out to Mae, and the two women became close friends despite the 24-year gap between their ages. After putting down the phone, Mae had one last night’s sleep on Earth before blasting off at 10:23 AM the next day. Now, only a few hours later, Mae is getting used to the weightlessness of space flight and enjoying the sight of Earth rotating beneath her.

But Mae doesn’t have a lot of time to soak in the view. Astronauts’ schedules in space are tightly controlled to make sure that they get the maximum possible work done, and Mae soon sets about the tasks that are her responsibility.

As a science mission specialist, Mae must spend much of her time in the Spacelab: an orbiting laboratory that blasted into space inside the shuttle’s payload bay. There, Mae supervises experiments, adjusting equipment settings and taking recordings and measurements. She tests to see whether an intravenous drip can be given in the weightlessness of space. She takes readings to help scientists on Earth understand the impact of being in space on bone cells. She conducts an experiment on the impact positive thinking can make on motion sickness. And she studies the effects of space travel on the reproductive cycle of amphibians by artificially fertilizing the eggs of four frogs.

After three years of specialized training ahead of this mission, Mae knows how to perform these experiments with her eyes closed. But she still feels the weight of expectation on her shoulders. This shuttle mission features a number of pioneering achievements. It has the first married couple in space together, and the first Japanese astronaut on a NASA mission. But Mae understands the significance of her “first” more than anyone. She believes that there are countless Black women who could do this job just as well as her but never apply because the astronaut program has seemed too white and too male.

So, Mae hopes to be a role model for these other Black women. And to emphasize her roots she’s brought two special keepsakes with her - a small statue from West Africa, and a photograph of Bessie Coleman, the first Black American woman to hold a pilot’s license.

And when it’s time to report the results of her Spacelab experiments to Earth, Mae has one more trick up her sleeve to pay tribute to her Black forebears. As she talks to mission control, Mae uses the same words that Lieutenant Uhura did in Star Trek: “Hailing frequencies open.” It soon becomes Mae’s signature phrase, and she uses it every time she speaks to Earth from space.

All too soon, the time to return home nears. But then Mae and the rest of the crew of Endeavour receive a pleasant surprise from Mission Control: Mae’s experiments have been so successful that NASA wants the space shuttle to remain in orbit for an extra day. The astronauts are given a few more precious hours in space - and Mae enjoys every moment of them.

Endeavour will eventually return to Earth on September 20th, 1992. By the time she touches back down, Mae will have logged seven days, 22 hours, 30 minutes, and 23 seconds in space. She will have orbited the Earth 127 times and cemented her place in the history of space exploration. And although Mae Jemison will never return to orbit again, her future career will take her back to a spaceship—only this time, she’ll be on a mission to boldly go where no astronaut has gone before: Hollywood.

Act Three: To Go Boldly

It’s the spring of 1993, at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles, California, six months after Mae Jemison returned to Earth.

As a television crew makes final preparations for shooting, Mae takes her place by a command console and waits for her cue. Today, Mae is back on board a spaceship—but this one is very different to the space shuttles she’s used to. Mae is on a Hollywood studio set: the transporter room of the starship Enterprise.

As soon as she set foot back on Earth, Mae received an invitation that she accepted without hesitation: to appear as an extra in the TV show Star Trek: The Next Generation. Since she arrived yesterday, Mae has been the talk of the set. It’s the first time that a real-life astronaut has been a guest actor on the starship Enterprise. At first, Mae was a little nervous to meet famous actors like Patrick Stewart and LeVar Burton. But the casting crew of the show were just as stars truck with Mae, and they fired hundreds of questions at her about what it was like to really fly into space. Thankfully, Mae had time to answer them all since she only had to learn dialogue for one scene.

As the director calls “action,” a camera pivots around Mae as she delivers her opening line.

MAE: "Phase distortion is dropping. The next transport window opens in 42 seconds."

Mae has nailed it. And at the end of the scene, the crew rush to set up the next shot, but the director pauses to give Mae a pat on the back in recognition of another job well done.

Mae’s appearance on Star Trek: The Next Generation will complete a circle that began when she was just nine years old. Sitting on her couch in Chicago, Mae watched the starship Enterprise on screen and made the promise to herself that one day she too would go into space. At the time, her ambition seemed as much a fantasy as the exploits of Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Uhura, but Mae overcame the odds and wrote her name in the stars when she became the first Black woman to venture into orbit on September 12th, 1992.

Outro

Next on History Daily. September 13th, 1987. Four people die after a canister containing radioactive material is stolen from an abandoned hospital in Brazil.

From Noiser and Airship, this is History Daily, hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham.

Audio editing by Muhammad Shahzaib.

Sound design by Matthew Filler.

Music by Thrumm.

This episode is written and researched by Owen Paul Nicholls.

Edited by Scott Reeves.

Managing producer Emily Burke.

Executive Producers are William Simpson for Airship, and Pascal Hughes for Noiser.