STS-8: The Space Shuttle Challenger takes off on the first night launch of the shuttle program. Guion Bluford becomes the first African-American in space on this mission.

STS-8 was the eighth NASA Space Shuttle mission and the third flight of the Space Shuttle Challenger. It launched on August 30, 1983, and landed on September 5, 1983, conducting the first night launch and night landing of the Space Shuttle program. It also carried the first African-American astronaut, Guion Bluford. The mission successfully achieved all of its planned research objectives, but was marred by the subsequent discovery that a solid-fuel rocket booster had almost malfunctioned catastrophically during the launch.

Space Shuttle Challenger (OV-099) was a Space Shuttle orbiter manufactured by Rockwell International and operated by NASA. Named after the commanding ship of a nineteenth-century scientific expedition that traveled the world, Challenger was the second Space Shuttle orbiter to fly into space after Columbia, and launched on its maiden flight in April 1983. It was destroyed in January 1986 soon after launch in a disaster that killed all seven crewmembers aboard.

Guion Stewart Bluford Jr. is an American aerospace engineer, retired United States Air Force (USAF) officer and fighter pilot, and former NASA astronaut, in which capacity he became the first African American to go to space. While assigned to NASA, he remained a USAF officer rising to the rank of colonel. He participated in four Space Shuttle flights between 1983 and 1992. In 1983, as a member of the crew of the Orbiter Challenger on the mission STS-8, he became the first African American in space as well as the second black person in space, after Cuban cosmonaut Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez.

August 30 is the 242nd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar; 123 days remain until the end of the year.