Maryna Vasileuskaya

She is the first Belarusian woman to be launched into space.

Maryna Vasileuskaya
Марина Василевская
Born	(1990-09-14) 14 September 1990 (age 33) Minsk, Byelorussian SSR, Soviet Union (now Belarus)
Occupation(s)	Flight instructor, flight attendant
Organization(s)	Belavia
Space career
Belarus Space Agency cosmonaut
Time in space	13 days, 18 hours and 41 minutes
Missions	Soyuz MS-25/MS-24

Maryna Vasileuskaya graduated from secondary school No. 151 in Minsk. She is a flight instructor and flight attendant for Belavia Airlines, working on the crews of Boeing and Embraer aircraft. She started dancing around 2002, when she was 12. Soon after completing school, she practiced ballroom dancing professionally for 15 years before joining the airline. She is passionate about interior design, she enjoys going to the swimming pool, doing aerobics, playing badminton and tennis in her free time, as well as gardening.

 

In December 2022, during a competitive selection held in Belarus, she was selected among six applicants from more than three thousand women to participate in a space flight under the "Belarusian Woman in Space" project on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft to ISS for a short duration mission. This contest was organised by Belarus Academy of Sciences. The other five were another flight attendant, two doctors, and two scientists.

 

 

In May 2023, she was one of the two remaining candidates (Anastasia Lenkova, being the other selected as her backup) following the Belarus Space Agency selection to fly aboard Soyuz MS-25 as a spaceflight participant in March 2024. She was designated as a member of prime crew of ISS EP-21.

On 24 July 2023, she commenced theoretical and practical training for the flight at the Yuri A. Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia. In October, she began practical training on the Soyuz MS spacecraft simulator to conduct routine flight and undocking operations, and underwent training in zero gravity conditions on the Ilyushin II-76 laboratory aircraft. In December, together with Oleg Novitsky, she conducted training on the actions of astronauts in the event of an emergency landing in a wooded and swampy area in winter. She isn't trained for US Orbital Segment as she only worked on the Russian Orbital Segment of ISS.

She traveled to the station with Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky and NASA astronaut Tracy Caldwell-Dyson, where she and Oleg spent approximately 13 days aboard the orbital complex as a part of 21st ISS visiting expedition. After spending those 13 days on the International Space Station, she and Oleg returned to Earth aboard the Soyuz MS-24 with NASA astronaut Loral O'Hara on 6 April 2024.