Star Trek actress to fly in NASA space mission

Nichelle Nichols, the actress who played Lt. Uhura in the original Star Trek television series, is set to join a NASA mission this year, according to a report on Mirror Online. The still spry 82-year-old Nichols will be flying on the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) mission this September.

 

She revealed this during an "Ask Me Anything" session on Reddit. “SOFIA does not, sadly, fly into space. It's an airborne observatory, a massive telescope mounted inside a 747 flying as high as is possible. I was on a similar flight, the first airborn [sic] observatory, back in 1977,” she said in the AMA thread, talking about it a bit more on her blog.

 

Nichols was the first African-American on television to play a non-stereotypical role, that of Lt. Uhura, the Head of Communications for the USS Enterprise. She suffered a mild stroke in June.

 

SOFIA is “the largest airborne observatory in the world,” with a planned lifetime of 20 years. It’s made up of a “modified Boeing 747SP aircraft carrying a reflecting telescope with an effective diameter of 2.5 meters.” — Bea Montenegro/TJD, GMA News