Mandla on his way to space

Beating a million other fellow applicants of the Axe Apollo Space Academy competition among other great achievements, 28 year old Mandla Maseko is on his way into space.

Born and bred in Soshanguve, the young pilot is now also an astronaut.

Excitement is evident through his smile as he recalls how it all began.

“I first saw an advert for the competition on television, and then heard another ad on the radio. I had to send a photo of myself jumping from anywhere, so I chose to jump off a wall and my friend shot me in mid-air,” said Maseko to Hoedspruit Herald.

“When I entered the competition my family along with some of my friends kept on asking me what it is that I am doing. They probably thought I was going a little crazy, and now that I have won the competition they tell me I have changed how many people think,” he further stated.

When Maseko was asked why he wanted to go into space, he simply responded by saying, “I want to defy the laws of gravity, and go down in history as the first black South African in space”.

Maseko who frequents Hoedspruit on a regular basis chose to go to the local space camp in the Free State where they had to go through three challenges.

Two of them were compulsory.

One was to skydive from 10,000 feet, and the other was the ‘vomit comet’.

Maseko challenged his mental and physical limits throughout a series of assignments that gave all recruits a taste of the thrills and trials faced by real astronauts.

Among the series of training assignments, Maseko mastered piloting an Air Combat USA aircraft and braced himself for the strength of blast-off in a G-Force Simulator at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.

He is among the international team of A.A.S.A space travelers.

“When the winners were announced and my name was called I was not prepared, the minute I realised that my name was called out, my body ignited, it was an out of body experience and it has not really sunk in yet. Maybe it will sink in the minute I launch into space”, said the astronaut.

“Usually we hear about these kinds of achievements being accomplished by people who are not from our own surroundings, but then when it happens to someone that you can relate to, it becomes an overwhelming feeling, so people who live near me are happy because space was characterised as a far- fetched dream and now it is reachable,” stated Maseko.

“Who would mention the first black president and not mention Nelson Mandela? When I go into space I will be named among the greats. It does not matter how many years it will take but that is where I am going,” Maseko told the Herald.

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