UNREALIZED DREAM

Crash Kills South African Man Set to Become First ‘Afronaut’

Mandla Maseko was loved in his home country and had already undergone training for his historic space mission.

Mandla Maseko—a South African man who became a national hero after winning the chance to become the first black African in space—has been killed in a motorbike crash before he could embark on his historic mission. Maseko, 30, was nicknamed “Afronaut” after winning a trip to space in a 2013 competition run by a U.S.-based space academy. More than a million people from 75 countries entered the competition to be one of 23 people who would travel on an hour-long trip on the Lynx Mark II spaceship. Maseko had already undergone training at the Kennedy Space Center for the trip. He was killed in a crash on Saturday, according to his family.