Angkasawan program

The Angkasawan program was an initiative by the Malaysian government to send a Malaysian to the International Space Station on board Soyuz TMA-11. The program was named after the Malay word for astronaut, Angkasawan. It resulted in Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor becoming the first Malaysian in space on 10 October 2007.

The program was officially announced by Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir bin Mohamad, as a joint programme with the Russian Federation. It was a project under the government-to-government offset agreement through the purchase of Sukhoi Su-30MKM fighter jets for the Royal Malaysian Air Force.

Under this agreement the Russian Federation bore the cost of training two Malaysians for space travel and for sending one to the International Space Station (ISS) in October 2007.

The Malaysian National Space Agency (ANGKASA), Ministry of Science, Technologies and Innovations was given the responsibility of selecting the candidates. Two candidates were then sent to the Cosmonaut Training Programme in Star City, Russia for 18 months of training.

The government set the main objectives of the program as uplifting the national image and instilling in the younger generation greater interest in mathematics and science. At the launch, the Malaysian Science, Technology and Innovation Minister Jamaluddin Jarjis said: "It is not merely a project to send a Malaysian into space. After 50 years of independence, we need a new shift and a new advantage to be more successful as a nation. "We want to awe and inspire, and spur Malaysians to attain greater success by embracing science and technology."

Later, Jamaluddin Jarjis was more specific as to the objective of the program when he said that it "was to create awareness among Malaysians the importance of science, technology and the space industry, which could help develop the economy further."

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Wikipedia