14 Lesser-Known Black Americans Who Changed Our Country For the Better

George Carruthers was inspired to study space engineering by a childhood spent visiting the Chicago planetarium and being a member of various science clubs. He built his first telescope at the age of 10. He then worked for the US Naval Research Laboratory, working on far ultraviolet astronomy. His inventions include the far ultraviolet camera/spectrograph, which was used to take ultraviolet images on the moon during the Apollo 16 mission. He later invented a camera that was used during the Space Shuttle mission.