One of America's first Black astronauts, Ronald McNair was a trailblazer who helped extend the world's frontiers. Born in 1950 to a struggling family in racially segregated Lake City, South Carolina, McNair never accepted second best. In high school he became an honor student, Star Scout, ferocious football player, skillful musician, karate champion, and valedictorian of his senior class. After graduating magna cum laude from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, he attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he performed some of the earliest experiments with high-pressure lasers and earned a doctorate in physics. He then took a job as a staff physicists at California's Hughes Research Laboratories.

In 1978, McNair joined the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's astronaut candidate program. He made his first space flight in 1984; two years later, on January 28, 1986, mission specialist McNair boarded the shuttle Challenger for his second journey into space. But the spacecraft exploded 73 seconds after lift-off, killing 35 year-old McNair and his six colleagues and plunging a shocked world into mourning.

"Whether or not you reach you goals in life depends entirely on how well you prepare for them and how badly you want them," McNair often told students. "You're eagles! Stretch your wings and fly to the sky." In his brief but brilliant career, he proved that neither poverty nor discrimination can defeat a determined individual. Equipped with faith, courage, and an unshakable will to win, Ronald McNair charted a path to the stars.