ANC Youth League salutes first black African to enter space

Cape Town, South Africa (PANA) - The youth wing of South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) has saluted Mandla Maseko, who is to become the first black South African to travel to space.

"The Youth League would like to celebrate and extol the first black South African, who is poised to defy the laws of physical and political gravity," the league said in a statement.

The 25-year-old Pretoria resident is one of 23 contestants who emerged as the winners in Unilever's competition at the Axe Apollo Space Camp in the US.

Maseko, who is training to be a radio presenter, will fly on XCOR Aerospace's Lynx space plane from the Space Expedition Corporation in Florida, US, in 2015.

He was among three South Africans selected from a field of 85,000 hopefuls.

Earlier this month, he joined more than 100 international contestants at a space camp in Orlando, Florida.

The tests included assault skydiving, air combat and G-force training, building and launching a rocket, and a written aptitude test.

The judges included the astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the second American to walk on the moon.

Maseko will be the second South African in space following Mark Shuttleworth, the Cape Town billionaire who bought a seat on a Russian Soyuz capsule for US$20 million and spent eight days traveling to the international space station in 2002.
-0- PANA CU/SEG 26Dec2013