President Trump signed executive orders to remove diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives at NASA and other federal agencies.The long-term consequences of these changes on NASA’s culture, workforce, and mission remain uncertain.Despite the challenges, advocates for diversity encourage aspiring astronauts and space professionals to remain persistent in pursuing their goals.
On paper, Edward Joseph Dwight Jr.’s qualifications spoke for themselves.
The military pilot had a degree in aeronautical engineering, and would strap his small frame into aircraft like the sleek, supersonic F-104 Starfighter at Edwards Air Force Base to go faster and higher than most dared.
Closer to the ground, the Kansas-born airman even had the backing of then-President John Kennedy — a charismatic young leader hoping to unify a racially torn country — to potentially represent the nation as the first Black astronaut, diversifying the fledgling, all-white, all-male astronaut corps.
“Kennedy was trying to get the nation ready for a Black astronaut,” said Dwight, whose battle against the Goliath of prejudice faded in the aftermath of Kennedy’s 1963 assassination.
The nation, beset by assassinations, racially motivated bombings in the south and scenes where peaceful civil rights protesters were beaten by law enforcement, had not caught up yet with Kennedy’s grand outlook, Dwight said.
Today, the former fighter pilot and astronaut trainee, who enlisted in the Air Force in 1953 and says he works to remain neutral when it comes to politics, is wearied by a troubling echo of the past century. Like others with deep connections to the nation’s dream of traveling to the stars, Dwight is worried that the progress NASA has made toward greater diversity will be unwound. That vision of space being a welcoming place for all qualified, talented people regardless of background, is being pushed aside, Dwight fears.
Nearly a month ago, President Donald Trump signed sweeping executive orders dismantling diversity and inclusion at NASA and other federal agencies — measures, Dwight and others point out, meant to give qualified women and minorities a chance to be part of NASA’s mission for space travel and stir up universal support from Americans of all backgrounds.
“The only thing I can say is that this is bordering on insanity,” said Dwight, whose dreams of seeing the Earth from orbit were deferred for six decades until he was launched to the edge of space from west Texas aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard capsule in May 2024 at age 90.
”What he’s doing is aimed at destroying everything that was built up over the years,” Dwight, now 91, told FLORIDA TODAY, referring to Trump. Dwight was speaking from his Colorado studio, where he has focused on his critically acclaimed sculpting for the last several decades.
DEI — diversity, equity and inclusion — scrubbed from NASA
At NASA, some web pages that touted the diversity of the space program, a deliberate policy since the late 1970s, have been scrubbed. Programs promoting diversity and inclusion — such as Black History Month or those honoring the achievements of women and other minorities, including Black astronauts — appear to have been shut down.
There are worries that hundreds of jobs may be slashed at many of NASA’s 10 field centers across the nation, just as is happening at other federal agencies.
Gone also is NASA’s push for programs aimed at getting more minority students involved with STEM efforts as a pathway to bring in the next generation of scientists, astrophysicists, researchers and astronauts. The agency’s counterparts in the Army have already pulled back recruitment efforts with a national Black engineering conference and a women’s school in South Carolina.
Employees at NASA were given the news Jan. 22 by one of the agency’s leading proponents of diversity: Janet Petro, NASA’s acting administrator. A native of Brevard County and a West Point graduate, she is the first woman to hold that position. In 2021, she became the first female director of Kennedy Space Center.
“These programs divided Americans by race, wasted taxpayer dollars and resulted in shameful discrimination,” Petro wrote in a memo to employees days after the president’s executive order banned DEI efforts across the federal government.
The communication, in contrast to Petro’s public support for diversity and inclusion over the years, used language borrowed from another memo issued by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Supporters of Trump’s efforts say the effort will restore a meritocracy where everyone, from pilots to scientists and astronauts, is judged on their abilities and end what they saw as dividing people by race and gender. They say the elimination of diversity programs will weed out people whom they suggest are unqualified to do their jobs.
“It’s infuriating,” said Kathryn Creedy, with the Space Coast Women in Aviation, an organization that aims to promote aviation careers for young girls and women.
“What they are assuming is that whatever minority is there is unqualified,” said Creedy, who has chronicled the aviation industry as a journalist and has worked with more than 200 women and girls who dream of going into aviation or space flight.
“That’s patently untrue. It assumes that standards have been changed. The aircraft doesn’t care if you are a woman, a man or a minority. They don’t pick you to fly because you’re nice.”
Cheryl Warner, news chief in NASA’s Office of Communications, said this week that “NASA is committed to engaging the best talent to drive innovation and achieve our mission for the benefit of all.”
“As new guidance comes in, we’re working to adhere to new requirements in a timely manner,” she said.
“Our agency has complied with the requirements of Executive Orders and additional guidance from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. We’re in the process of continuing to comply with the latest guidance, while also looking at content that was previously removed out of an abundance of caution and restoring content as appropriate.”
Figures, hidden and now gone
For decades following the Apollo moon missions, which featured only white, male astronauts, NASA sought to increase the presence of qualified women and minorities within its ranks, celebrating each time the first woman or the first Black or the first Hispanic broke through a barrier. And Americans responded.
Hollywood showcased a group of Black women who used math to break down social barriers at NASA in the 1950s and 1960s in the 2017 hit movie “Hidden Figures,” prompting the women to receive long overdue accolades. In 2023, the Amazon Prime movie “A Million Miles Away” told the story of José Hernández, a Mexican-American who fulfilled his childhood dream of becoming an astronaut. Dwight’s story has been highlighted, too, in documentaries including “Space Race.”
NASA, with heavy international fanfare, pledged that the next person to walk on the moon would be a woman as part of the Artemis mission named after the twin sister of Apollo.
“I was pleased with where it was headed,” said Lori Beth Garver, the former deputy administrator of NASA who was nominated to the position by President Barack Obama.
“The agency has been on a good track; we’ll just have to see where it will go with this administration,” Garver said, adding she has more trepidation about the direction the nation as a whole might be heading.
Not everyone was sold on the growing effort to diversify agencies like NASA, which still had a way to go. NASA reported in 2024 that women, Blacks and Hispanics overall made up just 27.7% of NASA’s engineers and other aerospace technology-related jobs. In 2024, women made up 50.5 percent of the population in the U.S., while 14.4 percent of the population identified themselves as Blacks with another 19.5 percent making up Hispanics, the nation’s largest ethnic group, according to the U.S. Census.
Conservatives like Florida Sen. Rick Scott and President Trump took aim at the DEI measures, expressing worries that underqualified candidates were being promoted to critical roles.
“Democrats spent the past four years pushing policies that prioritized radical far-left ideology over merit-based policies throughout our federal government,” said Scott, one of the sponsors of the Dismantle DEI Act, a proposed law that would remove federal support of DEI programs and initiatives from the government.
“That’s not what the American people want, and they sure as heck don’t want to be left footing the bill for a woke agenda they don’t believe in,” he said.
“I’m glad to see President Trump work to return our federal government to the meritocracy it should be, and I encourage my colleagues to support our Dismantle DEI Act to codify his actions and make Washington work better for the American people.”
Garver, however, noted that only the most qualified candidates are selected for the astronaut corps.
“That’s critical. Safety has already been very important,” she said.
In 2023, Petro told FLORIDA TODAY that implementing changes for the space agency to be more inclusive was a deliberate effort.
“It’s a slow process, but we are turning that dial, and I think we need to do the same thing for all demographics,” said Petro. “We have a lot of conversations amongst our leadership team because we think it’s important that (NASA) should really represent a cross-section of society.”
Uncertainty ahead for national space program
Trump’s anti-DEI edict comes as NASA and its contractors face increased budgetary scrutiny over costs as SpaceX mogul and Trump ally Elon Musk — whose space company has more than $5 billion in government contracts and continues to bid for others — hunts for cost savings. The Artemis return-to-the-moon program is already wildly over budget and behind schedule, and Boeing just this month warned its workforce on the program to expect layoffs. SpaceX competitor Blue Origin also announced layoffs of 10% of its workforce.
The Trump administration also issued “Fork in the Road” buyout offers to the nation’s 2 million federal employees, another move that added to the confusion of the last few weeks. NASA said this week that hundreds signed up for the offer, and the agency was currently evaluating those.
The Artemis return-to-the-moon program was heavily promoted as a model of diversity. NASA officials said a team of women astronauts would touch down on the moon in the next few years in hopes of inspiring a new wave of space explorers — and keeping taxpayer interest. The moon-landing crew has not been named yet, while the next Artemis mission to fly around the moon is targeting an early 2026 launch. Many experts have suggested that Musk’s Starship could get to the moon faster and cheaper than NASA’s effort, but Starship has suffered its own problems, including a spectacular explosion over the Caribbean last month.
Trump’s choice for the new NASA administrator, private astronaut and billionaire businessman Jared Isaacman, has yet to face a confirmation hearing, leading to additional uncertainty at the space agency.
Creedy said those women and minorities with aspirations for flying or heading into space should continue to work toward their goals.
“What is happening in Washington is political theater designed to shock us into paralyzing fear. While it is catching headlines, there are too many of us working hard to ensure the achievements and the stories of women and other minorities are told. Nor are we afraid,” she said.
“Do not let the chaos derail your ambitions. This is all very, very serious, but keep studying, keep going to conferences. Don’t stop.”
Diversity, the New Frontier
The year was 1958.
A year before, the Soviet Union launched a basketball-sized satellite into the skies above, sparking fear among American military leaders who had considered the U.S. far more scientifically advanced than their Russian counterparts.
President Eisenhower, also dealing with social issues such as sending federal troops into Little Rock, Arkansas, to desegregate schools the year before, signed NASA into existence, planting a space center near Cape Canaveral in order to test missiles and rockets. The population of Brevard, then mostly rural, with orange groves and small cities like Cocoa and Melbourne, was then about 111,000 people, according to the U.S. Census.
Federal dollars were pouring in, providing stability along with economic impact. However, from the beginning, few opportunities outside of custodial work were given to minorities.
One exception was Julius Montgomery, a Tuskegee Institute graduate who would later go on to become a Melbourne city council member. Montgomery, who was Black, worked early on with a team to build circuits for the missiles and rockets NASA tested at Cape Canaveral. He joined a handful of other Black mathematicians, engineers and technicians who would call themselves the “Missilemen.”
The battle for diversity also came as Cocoa Pastor W.O. Wells, a Freedom Rider who protested to end segregation and a friend of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., sought to have more Blacks work at the fast-growing space center.
The pastor, who died in 2015, was also the president of the Brevard County NAACP. He wrote then-President John F. Kennedy about the not-so-hidden irony of Black Brevard County residents living under the boot of segregation and brutality as the nation touted freedom and worked to send men to the moon as part of the Apollo program.
“In an unprecedented move, knowing that NASA was planning to hire approximately 200,000 people in Southern states, recruiters were asked to travel around the country trying to persuade African American scientists and engineers to work in the space program,” Petro said at a 2014 African American History Month celebration, according to a press release still found at the NASA.gov site.
Other pages detailing past diversity efforts, contrary to federal laws promoting the ongoing archiving of such information, were down, replaced by a “404” coding error. Not everything is gone, though, and photos featuring NASA employees on the website still showcase the agency’s diversity. NASA officials also had noted that they were restoring some content as appropriate.
It was public scrutiny from civil rights activists like Wells and others that moved the space agency to consider how to open its doors beyond the predominantly white work force that forged its early success.
The Kennedy administration learned of Dwight’s qualifications and, hoping to capitalize on the public optics of diversity, presented the idea to Dr. Wernher von Braun, the German engineer and director of the space program.
“Von Braun said ‘No,’” Dwight recalled, detailing behind-the-scenes discussions, adding that he instead continued his flight training through the Air Force.
“We were better trained,” he added.
Despite completing training in the Aerospace Research Pilot School program in 1963, from which NASA selected its astronauts and being recommended by the U.S. Air Force, Dwight’s name failed to turn up on the list for the next astronaut class. By 1966 and with the political winds of support dying behind him, Dwight left the Air Force, seemingly bringing an end to his dream to circle the curve of the Earth from space.
Actress takes on recruiter role
The Apollo program was canceled in the early 1970s and public interest in the space agency waned. In 1977, Nichelle Nichols — the Black actress who played communications specialist, Lt. Nyota Uhura on TV’s “Star Trek” — challenged NASA to recruit more women and minorities.
The groundbreaking show, featuring a diverse crew using science and reasoning to solve problems, had taken off with the American public.
NASA contracted Nichols, who frequently visited the Kennedy Space Center, to raise awareness about the space program. Because of the agency’s deliberate effort to pick a qualified woman candidate, the first female astronauts — six — were selected in 1978.
In 1983, Sally Ride became the first American woman to go into space as a result of the recruitment efforts.
The same year saw Guion Bluford as the nation’s first African American astronaut in space. Since then, 18 have gone on missions aboard the space shuttle or on the International Space Station, including Victor Glover who will helm the Artemis II mission.
To date more than 70 women have gone to space out of more than 360 U.S. astronauts, NASA statistics show. There have been 12 astronauts with Hispanic ancestry, NASA reports.
Diversity and high standards
Dr. Woodrow Whitlow, who was the first African American director of research and Technology at Glenn Research Center and later was named deputy director of the Kennedy Space Center, grew up in the 1960s learning about the launches from Cape Canaveral. He dreamed of sitting atop a rocket. In school, Whitlow turned to math and science, impressing his instructors enough that he was accepted into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the world’s top engineering schools.
Whitlow said Nichols efforts and NASA’s willingness to evolve helped open doors but it didn’t immediately change the mindset that women and minorities had to do more than meet the necessary standards.
Whitlow, who earned his doctorate with the agency’s support, recalled a meeting at Glenn in Cleveland, Ohio, where the space agency develops and tests the aviation and propulsion technology needed to jettison humans to the stars. This was years before Trump or even the acronym DEI would dominate the national political landscape.
The conversation turned to the need to recruit minorities into this predominantly white male workforce at Glenn.
“One of our colleagues spoke up and said, ‘Well, we’ve got to go and get some African American students from MIT or Harvard University,’” Whitlow, center director at Glenn Research Center from 2005 to 2010, recalled.
Whitlow said he seized on the opportunity to make a point.
“I asked everybody to raise their hands if they went to Harvard, no one did. But I went to Harvard, so I raised mine. I then asked how many went to MIT; maybe one other person raised their hand. I raised mine also,” Whitlow said.
“People think you’re lowering your standards when you talk about diversity but that’s just not the case.”
Dreams of space, realized
Dwight, at 91, and with the encouragement of the Black astronauts who followed in his wake, finally realized his dream to go into space, on that 2024 Blue Origin flight.
After all was said and done, the kid from Kansas who got on his first flight at 8 years old, flew as a military pilot and even had the backing of a president to be considered for NASA’s astronaut program was able to look down on the Earth from space. He was at last, an astronaut — this time, staring out at Earth’s curvature from aboard a rocket and not a military plane.
He remains optimistic.
“I have a lot of faith in America,” said Dwight, adding that while the tearing down of diversity programs and deep fiscal cuts are painful, the nation’s space program must remain resilient and patient.
Trump and the anti-DEI edicts will not last forever, he said.
“When you’re in space, you see that blue little ball hanging out there and wonder, philosophically, how could people treat each other like this,” he said.
“But if everybody had the opportunity to go to space, everything would be different.”
J.D. Gallop is a criminal justice/breaking news reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Gallop at 321-917-4641 or jgallop@floridatoday.com. X, formerly known as Twitter:@JDGallop.
