Mandla Maseko, a 30 year-old South African, was on his way to becoming the first black African to get into space after beating over a million applicants from 75 countries to win one of twenty-three coveted seats to space in a 2013 competition.
Sadly, Mr. Maseko will not see his space dream come true after he was involved in a motorcycle accident and died this past Saturday.
The part-time DJ and candidate officer with the SA Air Force took on the nickname ‘afronaut’ after winning the competition organized by a US-based space academy.
The trip to space would have taken place on an hour-long sub-orbital trip on the Lynx Mark II spaceship. The trip will see the selected team fly 103km (64 miles) into space.
Mandla Maseko, born to a janitor and auto tool maker, became a source of national pride and hope, as neighbors and friends commended him for putting South African township on the “galactic map”.
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He and the other 22 selected for the trip spent a week at the Kennedy Space Academy in Florida where he went through air combat and G-Force training.
He also got the opportunity to rub shoulders with the likes of Buzz Aldrin, a US astronaut and the second man on the moon during the Apollo 11 space mission of 1969.
