NG-13 Cygnus Named for Maj. Robert H. Lawrence, Jr.

Image Credit: U.S. Air Force

In honor of the first African American to be selected as an astronaut, Northrop Grumman named the Cygnus spacecraft for the NG-13 cargo launch to the International Space Station “S.S. Robert H. Lawrence.”

The US Air Force (USAF) selected Maj. Robert H. Lawrence, Jr., on June 30, 1967, as a member of the third group of aerospace research pilots for the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) Program, making him the first African-American to be selected as an astronaut by any national space program. Maj. Lawrence perished in a training flight in late 1967.

The MOL was a joint project of the USAF and the National Reconnaissance Office to obtain high-resolution photographic imagery of America’s Cold War adversaries. After the 1969 cancellation of the MOL program, NASA invited the younger (under 35) MOL astronauts to join its astronaut corps – seven of them transferred to NASA on August 14, 1969, as the Group 7 astronaut class and all of them went on to fly on the space shuttle in the 1980s.

Third group of MOL astronauts: Robert T. Herres, Robert H. Lawrence, Donald H. Peterson and James A. Abrahamson.

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