The first female astronaut from a North African nation will be a Tunisian military aviator – Atalayar

Tunisian President Kais Said, Tunisian Prime Minister Najla Buden and National Defence Minister Imed Memmiche have agreed with the private technology group Telnet that Tunisia's major national project is to send a woman into space.

After winning the 25 July referendum that endorsed the new constitutional text, which gives him enhanced presidential powers, Kais Said and his government team aim to keep the country's social forces as united as possible. In collaboration with Telnet, they are committed to raising the hopes of the country's more than 11 million inhabitants and taking a military woman to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2024, a year and a half after the successful launch of Challenge One, the first Tunisian satellite, into orbit.

To realise the public-private project, the air force under the command of Air Chief of Staff General Mohamed El Hajjam has shortlisted eight experienced female officers, aircraft and helicopter pilots and aeronautical engineers, who have already passed the preliminary tests.

Presented to the public on 13 August at the headquarters of the Tunisian engineering group, the little that is known about the eight nominees are their faces, their names - Hala Awassa, Ibtihal Youssef, Wafa El-Baldi, El-Yomna Dalali, Olfa Lajnef, Rahma Trabelsi, Hind Safferi and Malika Mabrouk - and that they are captains and commanders trained at the Bordj El-Amri Aviation Academy, 23 kilometres from the capital. Telnet's CEO Mohamed Frikha anticipated that the goal is "to fly the selected one to the ISS in March 2024".

The day chosen for the presentation of the eight astronaut nominees is no coincidence. Women's Day is celebrated in Tunisia every 13 August - and not on 8 March, which is International Women's Day - because on that date in 1956, the Personal Status Code was adopted, granting women in the country legal equality with men in the field of private life.

They will be trained at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre

Tunisia lacks the means to transport astronauts to the ISS and return them to Earth. To do so requires the cooperation of the United States or Russia, the only countries with manned transport means to access the orbital complex. The Carthage government has therefore turned for a second time to the Kremlin and its space agency, Roscosmos, for support.

The cost of the aid is not prohibitive, but it is not granted to just anyone. However, as chance would have it, on 31 July Vladimir Putin signed Russia's new national naval doctrine, which calls for a 'sufficient and permanent naval presence in the Mediterranean'. Therefore, it cannot be ruled out that time and good relations between the two countries will work in Moscow's favour. However, Tunisia is reluctant to cede logistical bases to any foreign military force.

For the time being, the immediate plans of the Ministry of National Defence and Telnet are for the eight candidates to undergo second medical tests in the country and an intensive Russian language course. The results will pave the way for six of them to travel to the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre (TsPK) in Moscow at the end of the year or early 2023, where they will undergo a thorough final selection process.

Over several weeks, they will undergo numerous interviews, clinical analyses, medical, physical, psychological and intellectual tests. Before pronouncing their final verdict, the Russian instructors will also assess their ability to work as part of a team, their strength to cope with extreme situations, as well as their spatial vision and mechanical comprehension skills.

Once the selection stage has been completed, two of them will be admitted to the cosmonaut course, which will last for about one academic year. Although both will receive exactly the same theoretical and practical training, the more suitable of the two will be the titular candidate and the other will be her alternate, in case she has to be replaced in the event of a last-minute incident.

The agreement with Russia dates back to the summer of 2021

In mid-August 2021, Tunisia's ambassador to Russia, Tarak Ben Salem, the then director general of the Russian Space Agency, Dimitri Rogozin, and Mohamed Frikha from Telnet signed an agreement in Moscow to train in Russia the astronaut candidates proposed by the Tunisian authorities. President Kais Said himself was present via video conference.

The Tunisian administration has ruled out the possibility of the military astronaut travelling to the ISS as a tourist. She is expected to "stay on board the ISS for 10 days and carry out scientific experiments in the fields of physics and medicine," said Mohamed Frikha.

The North African nation does not have a space agency, unlike neighbouring Algeria. This is why the orbital research project "is in the study phase and will be unveiled in March", according to the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, which is headed by physicist Moncef Boukthir.

It should be recalled that the North African country's first space milestone was reached on 22 March 2021, when the Challenge One nano-satellite built by a team of 20 Tunisian engineers from Telnet was launched into orbit at an altitude of 550km by a Russian Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Taking the Tunisian cosmonaut to the ISS will be the second major achievement of public-private cooperation.

By the way, are there any space links between Spain and Tunisia? None that I know of. And this despite the fact that Spain is the fourth largest client of the North African country, after France, Italy and Germany. Moreover, the arrival to power in October 2019 of the politician and jurist Kais Said has increased the nation's interest in space affairs, as is evident. Given that Spain is in the process of creating its space agency, this is an opportunity for the two nations to consider closer ties at the institutional and industrial levels.

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The first female astronaut from a North African nation will be a Tunisian military aviator - Atalayar