A South Africa man who had the opportunity to become the first black man in the world to go to space has died in a motor bike crash.
Mandla Maseko, aged 30, was killed in Pretoria on Saturday, a family statement read as reported by local media on Monday.
Masekon was nicknamed "Afronaut" and "Spaceboy" in his home country after he won a international competition to get a space in the Axe Apollo Space academy. He spent a week training at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida in 2015.
Spaceby as he was called, had a goal to go into suborbital flight and experience how it felt to be weightless.
"I want to be able to float and see outside the windows and see this big round blue and white ball that i called earth," Maseko told the Associated Press during an interview in 2014.
Spaceboy who grew up in a poor township outside Pretoria, said that his role model was Nelson Mandela and that he drew motivation from him.
"He broke new ground by being the first black president in South Africa ... that was inspiration for me," he told the Associated Press.
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However, the space flight never took place as the company organizing it, XCOR Aerospace, went bankrupt in 2017.
Though the space flight never took place as planned, Maseko kept striving. He was working as a part-time DJ and was a candidate officer in the South Africa Air Force, South Africa's Eye Witness News report.
Maseko also gave motivational speeches in South Africa. In 2014, he said "Defy gravity in everything that you do by shooting for the moon."
He said he wanted to motivate and inspire young people in Africa.