Abdul Ahad Momand, Afghanistan ’s first citizen in space, has died at age 67, his family and friends said.
A national hero, Momand died from cancer on June 21 in a hospital in Stuttgart, Germany, where he had lived since leaving Afghanistan in 1992 during the civil war.
“I am deeply saddened by the sudden death of Afghanistan’s first and only astronaut, Abdul Ahad Momand,” former President Ashraf Ghani wrote on X. “I pray to God to grant Momand a high place in heaven, and I extend my deepest condolences to his wife, children, and other family members.”
In 1988, Momand — then a 29‑year‑old air force pilot — 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, spending nine days in space and conducting scientific research on the Mir space station. His return aboard another spacecraft, 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.
An Associated Press report at the time noted that Momand, whose surname was then spelled Mohmand, highlighted his prior role in a joint Soviet‑Afghan military effort to end an insurgency in his homeland. The report cited him as saying he had flown hundreds of attack missions.
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 the AP report.
The AP said he addressed his fellow citizens in a televised message from orbit saying that violence cannot be seen from outer space.
“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 his mission, which Ghani described as a moment that introduced Afghanistan to the world “with national colors and national words” and presented its Islamic identity to the cosmos.
“His nine days on the Mir space station made Afghans forget the bitterness of the civil wars of 1988 and the rest of that decade,” Ghani added.
Momand was born in Ghazni province’s Andar district, in southeastern Afghanistan. He trained in military academies in Afghanistan and the Soviet Union.
His death was met with sorrow in Afghanistan among people who remembered him as a hero.
Zahir Ammar, a 35-year-old Jalalabad-based blogger on cosmology, paid tribute to Momand, emphasizing the historic significance of his mission for Afghanistan.
“Abdul Ahad Momand is the first Afghan astronaut in the entire scientific history of the country to go into space, he took the Holy Quran with him into space and added Pashto to the list of languages spoken in space,” he wrote.
“Now, astronauts’ trips to (international space stations) have become commonplace, but during the time of the late Abdul Ahad Momand, this was a great achievement for Afghanistan,” he said.
Ammar also expresses regret that Momand died in exile, wishing he could have shared his experiences with the younger generation in Afghanistan.
Funeral and memorial arrangements were not announced. Momand is survived by his wife, two daughters and a son.
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Fraser reported from Ankara, Turkey.
