KABUL, Afghanistan — Abdul Ahad Momand, the first Afghan citizen ever to travel to space, has passed away at the age of 67, according to his family and friends.
Momand lost his battle with cancer on June 21 at a hospital in Stuttgart, Germany, the city he had called home since departing Afghanistan in 1992 amid the country’s civil war.
Former President Ashraf Ghani expressed his grief on social media platform X, writing: “I am deeply saddened by the sudden death of Afghanistan’s first and only astronaut, Abdul Ahad Momand. 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.”
Back in 1988, when Momand was just 29 years old and serving as an air force pilot, he was chosen to participate in a Soviet space program that sent representatives from allied nations into orbit. At the time, Afghanistan was under Soviet control.
Following extensive training, Momand launched aboard the Soyuz TM-6 spacecraft alongside Russian cosmonauts Vladimir Lyakhov and Valery Polyakov. He spent nine days in space conducting scientific research on the Mir space station. His journey home aboard the Soyuz TM-5 hit a snag when technical difficulties caused a one-day delay, leaving him and Lyakhov in tight quarters and at risk of running out of food and oxygen.
An Associated Press report from that era noted that Momand — whose surname was spelled Mohmand at the time — spoke about his earlier role in joint Soviet-Afghan military operations aimed at suppressing an insurgency in his homeland, saying he had flown hundreds of attack missions.
Prior to his launch, Momand told the Soviet publication Sovietskaya Rossiya that his mission would help pinpoint Afghanistan’s mineral resources, evaluate hydroelectric potential, and examine glaciers and earthquake hazards, according to the AP.
From orbit, Momand addressed his fellow Afghans in a televised message, noting that conflict cannot be observed from 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 said.
During his mission, Momand also brought the Quran with him and read from it — a moment Ghani described as introducing Afghanistan to the world “with national colors and national words” while presenting 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 originally from the Andar district of Ghazni province in southeastern Afghanistan. He received military training at academies in both Afghanistan and the Soviet Union.
News of his death brought widespread sorrow across Afghanistan among those who regarded him as a hero. Zahir Ammar, a 35-year-old blogger from Jalalabad who focuses on cosmology, honored Momand’s legacy, calling attention to the historic nature of his achievement.
“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,” Ammar 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 added.
Ammar also voiced regret that Momand spent his final years in exile, expressing a wish that he could have shared his experiences with younger generations inside Afghanistan.
No details about funeral or memorial services have been announced. Momand is survived by his wife, two daughters, and a son.
