Abdul Ahad Momand, the first Afghan citizen to travel to space, died on June 21 at age 67 in a hospital in Stuttgart, Germany, where he had lived since leaving Afghanistan in 1992 during the civil war. His family and friends confirmed the death. The cause was cancer.
According to ABC News, Momand was a 29-year-old air force pilot in 1988 when he was selected to join a Soviet space program designed to send representatives from aligned nations into orbit, at a time when Afghanistan was under Soviet control.
After months of training, he flew aboard Soyuz TM-6 with Russian cosmonauts Vladimir Lyakhov and Valery Polyakov. He spent nine days in space and conducted scientific research on the Mir space station. His return aboard the Soyuz TM-5 was delayed by a day due to technical problems, leaving him and Lyakhov stranded in cramped conditions and at risk of being left without food and oxygen.
Before launching, Momand told Sovietskaya Rossiya that his space mission would help identify Afghanistan's mineral resources, assess hydroelectric potential and study glaciers and earthquake risks, according to an Associated Press report from the time.
From orbit, he addressed fellow Afghans in a televised message. "I would like to believe that such will be the situation on the land inhabited by my brothers and sisters, on the land of our fathers and mothers who have suffered so much during the years of the war," he was quoted as saying.
He also carried and read from the Quran during the mission. Former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani described that moment as introducing Afghanistan to the world "with national colors and national words" and presenting its Islamic identity to the cosmos.
Ghani wrote on X: "I am deeply saddened by the sudden death of Afghanistan's first and only astronaut, Abdul Ahad Momand." He added that Momand's "nine days on the Mir space station made Afghans forget the bitterness of the civil wars of 1988 and the rest of that decade."
Momand was born in Ghazni province's Andar district in southeastern Afghanistan. He trained in military academies in both Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. An AP report at the time noted that Momand had flown hundreds of attack missions as part of a joint Soviet-Afghan military effort.
His death was met with sorrow in Afghanistan. Zahir Ammar, a 35-year-old Jalalabad-based blogger on cosmology, paid tribute to Momand and emphasized the historic significance of his mission for the country.
