First black in space

Press, 20 September 1980, Page 1

First black in space

NZPA-Reuter Havana A Cuban Air Force pilot launched into space with a Russian colleague aboard a Soviet Soyuz-38 spaceship is the world’s first, black cosmonaut, the official Cuban press has reported. , The Prensa Latina , news agency : said that; Lieutenant • Colonel Arnaldo Tamayo Mendez and his Soviet colleague, \a veteran cos- . monaut, , Colonel Yury Rumanenko, will link up with the orbiting Salyut 6 space laboratory. Prensa Latina issued an . T autobiography of Colonel ; Mendez which said that he was : orphaned before he was a year old, and' started working later as a bootblack and vegetable seller before taking part in the; ,-

revolution that brought Dr Fidel Castro to power in 1959. The agency said that he then joined the Cuban Air Force as. a pilot. Part of his duties was to shadow American aircraft taking off and landing at the United States base of Guant tanamo, in eastern Cuba. It described him as the .world’s, first black, cosmonaut,' and said that lie . was married, with two children. Moscow Radio said that the two men would join the .two Soviet cosmonauts already aboard the space laboratory — Leonid Popov and Valery Ryumin — for a series of scientific and research : experiments which would last a week. The Soviet news agency,

Tass, said that General Raul Castro, the Cuban President’s brother who is First Vice-President and Defence Minister was at Baikonur, in Soviet Central Asia, to watch Colonel Mendez, aged 38 and his Russian colleague blast off.

The launch was the latest in a series by Soviet space authorities in which several East Europeans and a Vietnamese have joined Soviet cosmonauts in space shots. ' :

Popov and Ryumin have been aboard . the space station., since.. April this -year£ The Soyuz-38 crew will link with the space station today, according to Prensa Latina, and the crew will spend seven hours in the * laboratory. V*. ,