Guion S. Bluford Jr., space gardener

Continuing my research into which of NASA’s African American astronauts are space gardeners, I turned my attention to the second name on the (alphabetical) list: Guion Stewart Bluford Jr.

Guion (Guy) Bluford joined the astronaut class of 1978. He became the first African American in space when he launched on STS-8 in 1973. He flew on three more shuttle missions – STS-61-A, STS-39 and STS-53.

According to New Scientist, nearly every space shuttle flight through the 1980s and 1990s carried experimental plant payloads. However, as far as I can determine, three of Bluford’s four flights did not. Indeed, the primary experiments on STS-39 and STS-53 were conducted for the Department of Defense, and so are classified. It seems unlikely they involved plants.

However, STS-61-A was different. Space Shuttle Challenger launched on 30 October 1985 with ESA’s Spacelab, a laboratory module designed to be carried in the shuttle’s payload bay. The Spacelab D1 mission was the first with German mission management and to be controlled from the German Space Operations Centre.

STS-61-A holds the record for the largest crew to be onboard a shuttle for the entire mission – there were eight people on board. They split into two teams, each working a 12-hour shift to ensure 24-hour operations. Bluford joined NASA’s Jim Buchli and ESA’s Ernst Messerschmid on the Red team. 

According to NASA’s mission press kit, there were four plant experiments onboard, all investigating how plants respond to gravity:

Spacelab’s Biorack included a centrifuge to recreate the gravitational force that plants would feel on Earth (1g), thereby allowing scientists to distinguish between the effects of microgravity and other spaceflight conditions.

In August 1999, NASA published