Bernard Anthony Harris, Jr.

Bernard Anthony Harris, Jr. (born June 26, 1956 in Temple, Texas) is a former NASA astronaut. On February 9, 1995, Harris became the first African American to perform an extra-vehicular activity (spacewalk), during the second of his two Space Shuttle flights.

He then joined NASA Johnson Space Center as a clinical scientist and flight surgeon. His duties included clinical investigations of space adaptation and the development of countermeasures for extended duration space flight. Dr. Harris was assigned as a mission specialist on STS-55, Spacelab D-2, in August 1991.  During this flight, Dr. Harris logged over 239 hours and 4,164,183 miles in space.

Most recently, Dr. Harris was the Payload Commander on STS-63 (February 2-11, 1995), the first flight of the new joint Russian-American Space Program.