Abdul Ahad Mohmand
- Mir EP-3 Soyuz TM -5 TM-6/Sojus (1988 )
Abdul Ahad Momand, Pashto: عبدالاحد مومند, ( born January 1, 1959 in Sardah ) was the first cosmonaut from Afghanistan. As a guest cosmonaut of the Soviet Space Agency in 1988, he spent several days on the Mir space station.
Life
Momand comes from a Pashtun family and spent his childhood in the village Sardah about 100 km south of Kabul, where he attended grammar school and then studied at the Polytechnic. In 1978 he became a member of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan. In the same year he was drafted into the Afghan army and was then trained as a fighter pilot for the fighter-bomber of the type Su- 22M4 in the Soviet city of Krasnodar.
As of November 1987, he went through the selection process as an astronaut for a Soviet-Afghan space flight. In December he was in the group of the last eight, in January 1988, he was selected along with Mohammad Masum cosmonauts as a contender. In February Momand moved in with his wife in the " Star City " Zvezdny Gorodok in Moscow, where he received his six -month training in the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center. There is also the first of his three children was born.
Momand was first intended as a substitute for Masum, whose nomination was withdrawn, however, officially because of appendicitis. So Momand was launched on August 29, 1988 from Baikonur to the Mir. Commander of the spaceship Soyuz TM-6 was Vladimir Liakhov, which was adapted to the Soyuz spacecraft to fly without the assistance of a flight engineer. Liakhov Momand and formed the short-term occupation Mir EP-3, while the third man on board, the physician Valery Polyakov should enhance the long-term occupation Vladimir Titov and Musa Manarov that already was on board the Mir.
As a research cosmonaut Momand took part in several astrophysical, biological and medical experiments. Liakhov and Momand leaving behind the fresh spacecraft TM- 6 on the Mir and docked on 5 September with the spacecraft Soyuz TM -5 from. However, the planned landing could not be performed because the infrared sensors of the spacecraft did not work. A second attempt one lap later also failed, so Momand and Liakhov had to wait almost 24 hours until they were back on the predicted landing area. The third attempt was eventually successful.
Momand was a colonel in the Afghan Air Force and in 1991 vice-minister of aviation and tourism. In 1992, he fled with his wife and daughter only to India, then to Germany. Momand is now a German citizen and lives with his family in the Swabian town of Ostfildern.
Awards
Momand received after his return from space, both the ceremony as a Hero of the Soviet Union and the parallel accompaniment, the highest honor in his own country hero of Afghanistan, and a variety of military as well as civilian medal.