Ed Dwight, who is the first Black man to be trained as an astronaut, is set to become the oldest person to go to space at 90 years of age. Dwight in 1961 hoped to become the first Black astronaut in space, but he never made it.

A Blue Origin flight is finally giving the 90-year-old the chance that he was denied decades ago.

On Sunday, Dwight will join five others on a space flight by Blue Origin, the space travel company owned by Amazon boss Jeff Bezos. The 11-minute flight will take the six members to the edge of space, helping them experience weightlessness due to zero gravity and view the Earth’s horizon.

In 1961, Dwight was selected by then US President John F. Kennedy to enter an Air Force training program, known as the Path to NASA’s Astronaut Corps. Dwight was an elite test pilot at that time, but was ultimately not picked.

In 2022, Dwight revealed that when he got the offer letter in 1961 to be the first Black astronaut, he thought “these dudes were crazy.”

After the completion of the program in 1963, the Air Force recommended him to join the corps. However, he wasn’t selected. In 1966, he resigned from the military citing strain of racial politics.

“So, all these White folks that I’m dealing with, I mean, my peers, the other guys that were astronaut candidates and the leadership was just horrified at the idea of my coming down to Edwards and the president appointing me to the position,” CBS quoted him as saying.

He dedicated the rest of his life to telling Black history through sculpture. Dwight’s art, displayed around the country, includes iconic figures like Martin Luther King Jr, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and more.

Dwight’s seat on the Blue Origin flight is believed to cost $250,000 even though the ticket prices are a well-guarded secret. His ticket has been sponsored by the nonprofit organisation, Space for Humanity, known for providing help to send citizens to space.

An astronaut of the European Space Agency (ESA) has shared breathtaking photos of the Namib Desert in western Namibia captured from space. The Namib is believed to be among the oldest deserts on Earth, dating back 55 million years.

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, on Friday, Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen shared a few photos of the Namib showcasing the features of the coastal desert. “The rolling sand seas of the Namib desert along the coast of Namibia. It is perhaps the world’s oldest desert, stretching back 55-80 million years,” he wrote.

One of the photos also shows a crater-like formation in the desert surrounded by sand dunes which, according to Mr Mogensen, is the Brukkaros Mountain.

“A little inland of the sand dunes, is the Brukkaros Mountain. Although it looks like a meteor crater when seen from space, it is actually a caldera, about 4 km in diameter, that formed from an underground explosion when groundwater was superheated by rising magma,” he wrote.

The rolling sand seas of the Namib desert along the coast of Namibia???????? It is perhaps the world’s oldest desert, stretching back 55-80 million years. A little inland of the sand dunes, is the Brukkaros Mountain ????Although it looks like a meteor crater when see from space, it is… pic.twitter.com/dCeUpuhEkl

— Andreas Mogensen (@Astro_Andreas) September 15, 2023

The Namib, considered to be one of the driest places on Earth, means “an area where there is nothing” in the local Nama language.

According to US space agency NASA, the Namib coastal desert is formed due to a cool ocean current called the Benguela Current. The current suppresses rainfall in the region but creates morning fog that gets trapped on the surface of the sand dunes and allows sparse vegetation growth in some places. 

The dunes in Namib Desert, formed by strong onshore winds, are the tallest in the world measuring as high as 1,167 feet in places.

The dunes are created when materials get transported from thousands of kilomteres by river, ocean current, and wind. The reptiles and mammals in the arid region rely on fog, which is their primary source of water.