“Eventually, NASA selected [Charlie Bolden] in 1980 for the second group of space shuttle astronauts. Around 10 minutes into his first space flight, which he piloted, the crew was orbiting Earth when he saw a big island — which turned out to be Africa, he said. ‘Being of African descent, I had spent a lot of time studying the geography of the planet so I’d be able to try to find, perhaps, one or more of the countries from which my ancestors may have come…'”
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