Afghanistan’s first astronaut Abdul Ahad Momand dies at 67

Abdul Ahad Momand, Afghanistan’s first astronaut and a former Afghan Air Force fighter pilot who rose to colonel, died on June 21 in Stuttgart, Germany, at 67 after a prolonged battle with cancer. His life carried an unusual burden of symbolism: he reached space through a Soviet program while Moscow was still fighting a war in Afghanistan.

Momand flew aboard Soyuz TM-6 to the Mir space station on Aug. 29, 1988, with Soviet cosmonauts Vladimir Lyakhov and Valery Polyakov. The mission lasted nine days, and SpaceFacts lists his total time in space as 8 days, 20 hours and 26 minutes. He became the first Afghan citizen to travel into space and is widely described as the only Afghan ever to do so.

His path to orbit was not straightforward. Britannica says Momand was selected as a cosmonaut candidate in February 1988 and had originally been the backup to Mohammad Dauran Ghulam Masum, who was disqualified because of appendicitis. One account says Momand was chosen from more than 400 candidates for the Soviet Interkosmos program, the Cold War-era effort that sent cosmonauts from allied states into orbit.

Momand carried a copy of the Quran into space and was reported to have recited verses while in orbit, making him the first person to take the Quran to space. Some accounts also credit him with speaking Pashto from space to his mother, a moment that would make Pashto the fourth officially spoken language in space. The mission unfolded as the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan had just begun in May 1988, giving the flight a sharp political edge as a symbol of Afghan pride under Soviet patronage and Soviet occupation.

After the collapse of the Soviet-backed government, Momand fled Afghanistan and settled with his family in Stuttgart in 1992. Afghan diplomatic missions in Canada issued condolences on June 22, and Afghan broadcasters including TOLO News and Afghan Islamic Press described him as a national pioneer. His death closes the biography of a man whose most famous achievement was inseparable from the contradictions of his era: a Soviet-launched Afghan astronaut, carrying the Quran, circling Earth while his own country remained at war.