Video: 'ABC News Coverage of STS-8' (parts 1-6)

(Tuesday, August 30, 1983, 2:32:00 a.m. EDT) — Guion Bluford, 40, became the first African-American in space early today, traveling aboard Space Shuttle Challenger on the mission STS-8 following a 17-minute delay due to thunderstorms near the launch site.

Bluford received an undergraduate degree in aerospace engineering from Pennsylvania State University in 1964 and was commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Air Force, where he trained as a fighter pilot.

He flew 144 combat missions during the Vietnam War.

In 1978 he earned a doctorate in aerospace engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology.

Bluford was one of 35 individuals selected in 1978 from 10,000 applicants in NASA’s first competition to become space shuttle astronauts.

The launching of Challenger‘s planned six-day mission came 17 minutes late because nature had put on its own dazzling and daunting sky show.

Late in the countdown, thunder rumbled menacingly over the Kennedy Space Center, lightning danced close to the launching pad and rain drenched the thousands of people who waited to see the first nighttime liftoff of American astronauts in more than a decade.

Video: 'Celebrating the Legacy of Dr. Guion Bluford'

After the storm passed and the clouds became less ominous, the rocket engines erupted in orange flame and billowing white vapor, turning night into day, and the spaceship rose into the overcast.

Its thunder reverberated off the low clouds, filling the air with shock waves more intense than on any previous shuttle launching.

The spectacle was, if anything, more impressive to the Challenger‘s crew, Captain Truly, Comdr. Daniel C. Brandenstein and Lieut. Comdr. Dale A. Gardner, all of the Navy, and Lieut. Col. Bluford and Dr. William E. Thornton, a physician.

“You should have seen it from here,” Captain Truly radioed to Mission Control as the Challenger climbed toward orbit. ”It was daylight almost all the way up.”

Captain Truly, the only member of the crew who had flown in space before, said the flaming rocket exhaust was “about 500 times more than I remember” on his daytime shuttle launching in November 1981.

Challenger would touch down at 12:40:33 a.m. PDT, on Sept. 5, 1983, on Runway 22 at Edwards Air Force Base, on the morning of the seventh day of the mission.

As with the launch, this would be the first night landing of the program.