Cuba
Cosmonaut – Arnaldo Tamayo
Flight – Soyuz-38, 09/18/1980
Time in space – 7d 20h 43m
He was born on 29 January 1942 in the province of Guantanamo (Cuba) to a family of workers.
On 1 March 1978, Lieutenant Colonel Arnaldo Tamayo Mendez of the Cuban Air Force was selected as one of the candidates for a Soviet-Cuban space flight under the Intercosmos programme. He was trained at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre. In October 1978 he was assigned to the main crew of the Soyuz-38 spacecraft.
On 18-26 September 1980 he made his only space flight as a research cosmonaut on Soyuz-38 with Yuri Romanenko as commander of the international crew. The Soviet-Cuban crew worked on the Salyut-6 orbital station with Leonid Popov and Valery Ryumin, members of the fourth main expedition stationed there. During the eight-day mission, Tamayo Mendez and Romanenko carried out about 20 scientific experiments, including those of the Cuban programme.
In total, Arnaldo Tamayo Mendez spent 7 days, 20 hours and 43 minutes in space. He was the first Cuban and Latin American to go into space.
Hero of the Republic of Cuba (1980), Hero of the Soviet Union (1980).
Awarded the Soviet Order of Lenin (1980), the Russian Order of Friendship (2011) and the Medal for Merits in Space Exploration (2011).
