Pham Tuan
Encyclopedia : P : PH : PHA : Pham Tuan
Phạm Tuân (born February 14, 1947) was the first Vietnamese cosmonaut, and the first Asian in space. He was also one of the few foreigners to be awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
Pham Tuan was born in Quoc Tuan, Thai Binh province in northern Vietnam. He joined the PAVNAF, or People's Army of Vietnam (then the North Vietnamese) Air Force in 1965 to be later commissioned as a combat officer, fighting in the Vietnam War against US fighter jets from then onwards until 1975.
On the night of December 27, 1972, he shot down a United States B-52 bomber circling over the Hanoi, becoming the first person ever to do so. For his military exploits, Pham Tuan received a number of high State distinctions including the Ho Chi Minh Order. He was also given the Order of Lenin and the rare honour of being one of the few foreigners to be awarded the title "Hero of the Soviet Union".
He eventually rose to the rank of Major General in the PAVNAF before eventually training to be a research engineer with the budding USSR-Vietnamese Space program.
He was selected as part of the sixth international crew for the Intercosmos programme on April 1 1979. His backup cosmonaut was to be Bùi Thanh Liêm.
Pham, along with Soviet cosmonaut Viktor Gorbatko, was launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome on July 23, 1980, on board Soyuz 37. In the traditional Vietnamese lunar calendar, this was the 12th day of the 6th month, Year of the Monkey [Canh Than]. They were to service the Salyut 6 station.
During his time in orbit, Pham performed experiments on the melting of mineral samples in microgravity. He also carried out plant experiments on azolla. Pham Tuan also photographed Vietnam from orbit for mapping purposes.
Pham was in space for 7 days, 20 hours and 42 minutes. He completed 142 orbits, and was recovered on July 31, 1980.
He is married and has one child. As a cabinet minister of the Vietnam National Assembly, he is now the Head of Vietnam's Defence Industry of the Ministry of Defense, and Head of the General Department of Economics.
External link
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.