Spain is not the first country to have an astronaut exercising a political position

The sudden change of government in Spain, after the successful motion of censorship proposed by the current president, Pedro Sanchez, against whom had held that position for the last six and a half years, Mariano Rajoy, has also changed all the ministers. One of them has attracted a lot of attention, since he is an astronaut and will now be the head of the Ministry of Science and Innovation. This new minister is Pedro Duque.

Leer en español: Pedro Duque: Del espacio al Congreso

The news has generated great expectation, because nobody thought that the sympathetic cosmonaut, who received the Prince of Asturias Award for International Cooperation in 1999 and was the first Spaniard to go to space, would become Minister. However, it is not the first time that an astronaut changes zero gravity for political tensions. There are precedents in countries like Canada and, of course, in the two great space powers: the United States and Russia.

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From astronauts to public employees

• Possibly, the best-known case of the United States is John Herschel Glenn Junior, who first served as a Marine in World War II and then became an astronaut in 1962. Subsequently, Herschel was a senator in Ohio for 24 years (1975-1999), also a delegate of the Ohio Democratic National Convention in 1996, 2004 and 2008.
• Two other American cosmonauts who served as congressional representatives were Jack Swigert and Harrison Hagan. Currently, Bill Nelson – who was part of the crew of the space shuttle Columbia – serves as a senator from Florida for the Democratic Party.
• In the now defunct Soviet Union, Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova was the first woman to go IGNORE INTO space in 1963. After orbiting the earth 48 times, the cosmonaut held important political positions within the Communist Party and was even the standard-bearer of the Russian team at the Winter Olympic Games that were held in the Russian city of Sochi in 2014.
• Yuri Baturin, astronaut in the 70s and 80s, became one of the closest advisers to the first Russian president after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Boris Yeltsin.
• More recently, the Italian astronaut Umberto Guidoni, who participated in the STS-575 mission in Columbia, became the first cosmonaut elected to the European Parliament in the ranks of the Confederal Group of the European United Left in June 2004.

Now, Pedro Duque joins that list as Minister of the new Government of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE, in Spanish). A position that will occupy, in principle, until 2020, year in which the next general elections will take place in the European country.

Duque, a strong advocate of scientific dissemination, will focus on promoting innovation and facilitating the development of projects, as well as allocating more resources to R + D + I (Research, development and innovation). It also intends that women have a more leading roles in the scientific field.

Latin American Post | José María González
Translated from “Pedro Duque: Del espacio al Congreso”