49 Fun Facts About Mae Jemison

Mae Jemison's 1992 Shuttle flight lasted about how long?

Eight days: from launch on September 12 to landing on September 20, the crew of seven split into red and blue teams working 12-hour shifts, so the experiments never stopped.

Which Space Shuttle carried Jemison into orbit?

Endeavour: NASA's newest orbiter was making only its second flight, and schoolchildren across America had chosen its name, after the ship Captain Cook sailed to the South Pacific.

Jemison was a co-investigator on an experiment aboard her Shuttle flight that studied which cells?

Bone cells: in weightlessness an astronaut's bones thin by about 1% a month, and Jemison, a physician, was one of the scientists behind the experiment, not only a crew member flying it.

In which state was Jemison born?

Alabama: Jemison was born in Decatur in 1956, but her family moved north when she was three, and it is the big city she grew up in, not her birthplace, that she calls her hometown.

In which city did Jemison grow up?

Chicago: on the South Side in the 1960s, Jemison read her way through the library's science books, and she says she always knew she would go to space.

Which Star Trek character helped inspire the young Jemison's interest in space?

Lieutenant Uhura: Nichelle Nichols played her, and when Jemison filmed a Star Trek guest role of her own decades later, Nichols came to the set to meet her.

What did a kindergarten teacher assume when Jemison said she wanted to be a scientist?

That she meant a nurse: Jemison answered that no, she meant a scientist, and where teachers doubted her, her parents backed her curiosity.

Jemison auditioned to play Maria in which musical, ending up as a background dancer instead?

West Side Story: Jemison auditioned because she hoped to dance professionally, having trained since childhood in ballet, jazz, modern and African dance.

Jemison was only 16 when she entered which California university?

Stanford: Jemison won a National Achievement Scholarship to go, and she had already decided at high school that she wanted to work in biomedical engineering.

Alongside a chemical engineering degree, Jemison earned a BA in which subject?

African and African-American studies: outside class Jemison led the Black Students Union and choreographed a show about the African-American experience.

Where did Jemison earn her medical degree?

Cornell: between terms Jemison studied in Cuba, worked in a Cambodian refugee camp in Thailand and spent a summer in Kenya with the Flying Doctors.

Whose dance classes did Jemison keep attending while at medical school?

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater: Jemison never gave up dancing, and when she flew into orbit years later she took one of the company's posters with her.

In which two countries did Jemison serve as a Peace Corps medical officer?

Liberia and Sierra Leone: for two and a half years Jemison ran the health care of Peace Corps volunteers and US embassy staff there, and helped research a hepatitis B vaccine.

Whose 1983 spaceflights inspired Jemison to apply to NASA?

Sally Ride and Guion Bluford: once the first American woman and the first African-American man had flown, Jemison said, she felt the astronaut program had opened up enough for her to apply.

Jemison was one of 15 chosen for NASA's first astronaut class after which disaster?

Challenger: Jemison first applied in 1985, but the loss of the shuttle and its crew in 1986 froze astronaut selection, so she had to apply all over again the next year.

Alongside English and Russian, Jemison speaks which African language?

Swahili: Jemison took it up as an undergraduate, then spent a medical-school summer working in Kenya, where it is widely spoken.

In her TED talk, Jemison argued that schools should teach the sciences together with what?

The arts: Jemison, a dancer as well as a doctor, says science and dance both express human creativity, and she took a dance company's poster into orbit as a salute to it.

What new role was Jemison given on her Shuttle flight?

Science Mission Specialist: NASA had just created the job, and it put Jemison in charge of experiments in which the crew, herself included, served as the test subjects.

Jemison's Shuttle flight was a joint mission between the United States and which country?

Japan: the laboratory in the cargo bay was named Spacelab-J because its space agency sponsored most of the experiments, and it sent the first of its astronauts to fly on a Shuttle.

Which Star Trek line did Jemison say at the start of every shift in orbit?

'Hailing frequencies open': Jemison, a lifelong fan of the show, kept the salute up for the whole flight, working on the blue team while the red team slept.

A photo of which pioneering aviator did Jemison carry into space?

Bessie Coleman: no American flying school would teach a Black woman, so she went to France and earned her pilot's licence there in 1921.

After leaving NASA, Jemison set up her own company in which city?

Houston: Jemison had made her home in the area while she was an astronaut at the Johnson Space Center, and she stayed on when she left, running her technology firm from the city.

Jemison tested a biofeedback technique on herself in orbit as a possible treatment for what?

Motion sickness: the method trains people to monitor and control their own body's responses, and in 1999 Jemison founded a company to offer it to patients on Earth.

What did Jemison produce in orbit using NASA's Fluid Therapy System?

Saline solution: the test was whether a spacecraft could purify its own water and mix drip fluids on board, since every ready-made bag launched from Earth adds weight.

Which animals did Jemison help induce to ovulate aboard her Shuttle flight?

Frogs: the eggs they laid were fertilised in orbit so that scientists could see how tadpoles develop when there is no gravity.

What set Jemison's crewmates Mark Lee and Jan Davis apart from every Shuttle crew before them?

They were married to each other: the two wed after both had been assigned to the flight, and NASA let the crew stand while insisting its unwritten policy against flying spouses together had not changed.

Which NASA engineer, later author of the memoir filmed as October Sky, trained Jemison's crew?

Homer Hickam: he said NASA was not thrilled to lose an astronaut it had spent so much on training, but that it would have been wrong to stand in Jemison's way.

As a girl, Jemison turned an infected splinter in her thumb into a science project on what?

Pus: Jemison admits it sounds gross, but when she asked what the stuff was she was told to go and find out for herself, and she ended up reading everything she could about it.

Jemison's consulting firm designed a system using what to carry health-care information to remote parts of developing countries?

Satellites: Jemison left NASA wanting to put space-age technology to work for developing countries, and her firm also advised them on building solar power plants.

Jemison named her educational foundation after whom?

Her mother, Dorothy: a career schoolteacher, she believed every pupil should be expected to excel, and Jemison set up the foundation with her brother and sister to carry that idea on.

What is the name of the international science camp Jemison founded for 12- to 16-year-olds?

The Earth We Share: teams of campers spend their weeks on one big real-world problem, such as working out how many people the planet can hold.

At which college was Jemison a professor of environmental studies from 1995 to 2002?

Dartmouth: Jemison taught a course on space-age technology and developing countries, and ran an institute there for getting advanced technology to poorer nations.

Which Star Trek series gave Jemison a 1993 cameo as Lieutenant Palmer?

The Next Generation: the astronaut who had opened each shift in orbit by quoting Star Trek became, in the episode 'Second Chances', the first real space traveller to act in it.

Which actor invited Jemison onto Star Trek after learning she was a fan?

LeVar Burton: best known as the engineer Geordi La Forge, he was directing the episode himself, which is why he could offer her a part in it.

From 1994 Jemison hosted the science series World of Wonder on which cable channel?

Discovery Channel: Jemison was the show's technical consultant as well as its host, part of her push after NASA to get more children interested in science.

Which US agency seeded the 100 Year Starship project that Jemison's foundation won in 2012?

DARPA: the Pentagon's research agency put up $500,000 not to build a spacecraft but to start an organisation that could last a century and foster the research a trip to the stars would need.

In 2021 Jemison won the Thayer Award for living the motto 'Duty, Honor, Country' of which military academy?

West Point: Douglas MacArthur accepted the same award in 1962 with his farewell speech to the cadets, built around the motto's three words.

What was the title of Jemison's 2001 memoir for young readers?

Find Where the Wind Goes: Jemison wrote it for teenagers, telling them that everyone has adventures, large and small, and has to work out what they meant.

Which publisher brought out both Jemison's memoir and her 2013 True Book science series?

Scholastic: the books were part of Jemison's long campaign to get more children, especially girls and minority pupils, interested in science.

Which scholar hosted the PBS series that traced Jemison's ancestry?

Henry Louis Gates Jr.: on his 2006 series African American Lives, a DNA test showed Jemison to be 13% East Asian, and she said she had no idea how that had happened.

Which sorority's banner did Jemison carry on her Shuttle flight?

Alpha Kappa Alpha: the oldest Black sorority counts Jemison among its members, and in 2008 she gave the closing speech at a 100th-anniversary celebration in Florida.

Jemison was one of four minifigures in which 2017 LEGO set?

Women of NASA: the set began as a fan's proposal with five figures, but the mathematician Katherine Johnson was left out when LEGO could not get approval from everyone involved.

A 2019 Google Doodle quoted Jemison's advice never to be held back by what?

Other people's limited imaginations: Jemison's advice goes on to warn that if you adopt their attitudes, the possibility stops existing, because you have already shut it out yourself.

In 1996 a traffic stop ended in Jemison's arrest over an old warrant for what?

Speeding ticket: Jemison filed a formal complaint saying the officer had twisted her arms and forced her to the ground, and he was suspended during an inquiry that later cleared him.

The National Women's Hall of Fame, Jemison's 1993 honour, is in which town?

Seneca Falls: the hall was founded there because the town is the birthplace of the women's rights movement, host of its first convention in 1848; it honoured Jemison the year after her flight.

What was Jemison's first job after her medical internship in Los Angeles?

General practitioner: Jemison saw patients for a Los Angeles medical group for only a few months, then left to run the Peace Corps' medical care in two countries overseas.

In 52 years Harvey Mudd College had given what to only ten people before Jemison, its 2007 commencement speaker?

An honorary degree: she was the first woman the college had ever given one, and hers was a doctorate in engineering, the field she trained in before she became a doctor or an astronaut.

Jemison served on the board of which health body from 1990 to 1992?

World Sickle Cell Foundation: more than nine in ten Americans with the inherited blood disorder are Black, and Jemison joined its board while still waiting for her first spaceflight.

Jemison voiced a character in which 2023 animated Marvel series?

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur: Jemison guest-starred as Skipster in an episode where the young inventor Lunella builds a device to fast-forward through her chores.