Before flying to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard the Russian Soyuz MS-22 ship, the American astronaut of Salvadoran origin, Frank Rubio, took a space to attend to the media in a space opened by NASA on social networks.
“I am very proud, although we all feel a little nervous because of the sense of responsibility,” said the astronaut during one of his speeches, when talking about his first mission to space.
“It’s an honor and it’s incredibly humbling to be in this position. The reality is that in the history of mankind, there are less than 600 people who have managed to go to space, and I feel blessed to be one of the lucky few”, he commented.
Rubio is already in Russia, where he is completing his training, which he calls intense and interesting, and from where he will depart, together with cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin, for the space station.
The flight is scheduled for Wednesday, September 21, aboard the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft, which will take off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Rubio, who became an astronaut in 2017, will be a flight engineer and a member of the station’s Expedition 68 crew.
Francisco Carlos Rubio was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1975. He is the son of Salvadoran emigrants to the United States. He is a surgeon and a lieutenant colonel in the United States Army.
“It is a great pride and honor to represent Latinos, especially the Salvadoran community. It is an important thing to be a role model. It is very important that young people have role models, and it fills me with pride to be one of them, “he stressed in an interview with Voice of Diaspora, after being announced as one of the candidate astronauts to go to the Moon.