1. Marcos Cesar Pontes was born on 11 March 1963 and is a Brazilian Air Force pilot, engineer, AEB astronaut, politician and author.
21 Facts About Marcos Pontes
1. 2.
Marcos Pontes became the first South American and the first Lusophone to go into space when he docked onto the International Space Station aboard Soyuz TMA-8 on 30 March 2006.
3.
Marcos Pontes is the only Brazilian to have completed the NASA astronaut training program, although he switched to training in Russia after NASA's Space Shuttle program encountered problems.
4.
Marcos Pontes left the post on 31 March 2022 and in the same year was elected federal senator for his state, Sao Paulo.
5.
Marcos Pontes was born in the town of Bauru, in the southeastern state of Sao Paulo.
6.
Marcos Pontes's father Vergilio was a civil servant of the Instituto Brasileiro do Cafe and his mother Zuleika was clerk of the Rede Ferroviaria Federal.
7.
Marcos Pontes is one of the most experienced jet pilots in the Brazilian Air Force, where he holds the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel and has flown more than 2000 hours in 25 different aircraft.
8.
Marcos Pontes began NASA training in August 1998 and qualified as Space Shuttle Mission Specialist in December 2000.
9.
Marcos Pontes attended the Naval Postgraduate School of the US Navy in 1998.
10.
Marcos Pontes's flight was postponed indefinitely when AEB confirmed that it could not produce the Express Pallet and its components for NASA.
11.
Marcos Pontes' flight coincided with celebrations of the 100th anniversary of Brazilian aviation pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont's successful flight of a fixed-wing airplane in Paris in October 1906.
12.
On 30 March 2006, Marcos Pontes became the first Brazilian and the first native Portuguese-speaking person to go into space, where he stayed on the International Space Station for a week.
13.
Marcos Pontes landed in Kazakhstan on April 8,2006, with the crew of Expedition 12.
14.
Marcos Pontes entered the reserve of the Brazilian Air Force and awaits a new space mission.
15.
Marcos Pontes is an Invited Researcher at the Institute for Advanced Studies of the University of Sao Paulo at Sao Carlos.
16.
Marcos Pontes announced his intention to visit space a second time back in 2009.
17.
Directors of research centres linked to the Ministry asked Marcos Pontes to intercede on behalf of Galvao, something that did not happen.
18.
Besides his work as an astronaut and Air Force commander, Marcos Pontes authored four books:.
19.
In 2006, Marcos Pontes returned to Brazil after the Missao Centenario, deciding to enter the Aeronautics reserve.
20.
In 2006, Marcos Pontes was investigated by the Military Prosecutor to determine whether he had violated Article 204 of the Military Penal Code, which prohibits active military involvement in any commercial activity.
21.
In September 2017, documents were released by The Intercept newspaper, which showed Marcos Pontes' supposed status as a partner in the company, but which had always been denied by him.