South Africa’s National Space Agency (SANSA) intends to send two female astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS), its executive director, Humbulani Mudau, said in an interview published on Sunday.
The women’s space mission is scheduled to take place in the “next few years,” Mudau told the head of Russia’s space corporation Roscosmos, Yuri Borisov, the news agency RIA Novosti reported.
Sara Sabry became the first person from Egypt and first African woman to travel into space in 2022. Mark Richard Shuttleworth, an entrepreneur and philanthropist, became the first South African man to travel to space as a tourist aboard the Russian spacecraft Soyuz TM-34 in April 2002.
Roscosmos has engaged in joint space missions with various governments, including the United Arab Emirates, allowing the first Emirati astronaut, Hazza Ali Almansoori, to journey to the ISS in 2019. The flight took place aboard a Soviet Soyuz rocket with a Russian cosmonaut and a NASA astronaut.
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