Most Vietnamese schoolkids grew up learning about Phạm Tuân as the first Vietnamese in space, but few know that he was also the first Asian person to clinch the honor.
Born in 1947 in Thái Bình, Phạm Tuân joined the air force and graduated from the Krasnodar Flight School in the Soviet Union as a MiG-17 pilot in 1967. He became a lieutenant colonel before being sent to the USSR-Vietnamese joint space program to train as a research cosmonaut.
In 1979, he was chosen as a crew member of the 6th international spaceflight as part of the Interkosmos (Интеркосмос) program. On July 23, 1980, Phạm Tuân and Soviet cosmonaut Viktor Gorbatko were launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome (Kazakhstan) on board the Soyuz 37 mission.
They successfully docked at the Salyut 6 space station, stayed for seven days, and returned on July 31, making Tuân the first Asian and Vietnamese to travel into space.
Interkosmos, founded in 1967 at the peak of the Cold War-era “Space Race” between the US and the USSR, was established by the Union to promote cooperation among socialist countries in space exploration and research.
As part of Interkosmos, USSR cosmonauts accompanied non-Soviet companions on routine crew missions. Participants were selected from members of the Eastern Bloc and countries of the Non-Aligned Movement. Under the initiative, many early milestones in space travel were recorded, such as the first non-US/USSR person in space (Vladimír Remek of Czechoslovakia), the first black-Hispanic person in space (Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez of Cuba), and Phạm Tuân as the first Asian.
While in the orbiting facility, Tuân conducted scientific experiments on mineral melting in microgravity; studied azolla, an aquatic fern; and photographed Vietnam from space for cartography.
Before retiring in 2008, Tuân held the rank of Lieutenant General. He lives in Hanoi with his wife and two children. He’s shared in interviews that he still keeps a close friendship with his Russian cosmonaut friends and travels to meet them every year.
To date, only three people of Vietnamese descent have been to space: Phạm Tuân (1980), American biochemist Eugene Huu-Chau Trinh (1992), and most recently, American activist Amanda Nguyen (2025).
Photos via khoahoc.tv.
