Mandla Maseko: Wins hour-long sub-orbital trip on the Lynx Mark II spaceship

Mandla Maseko, who beat off a million other entrants to be selected as one of 23 people who will travel into space, speaks to a journalist in Mabopane, near Pretoria, on January 9, 2014

No one in Mandla Maseko's family has ever stepped outside South Africa, but the young township DJ is set to rocket into space next year.

From the dusty district of Mabopane, near Pretoria, 25-year-old Maseko has landed a coveted seat to fly 103-kilometres (64 miles) into space in 2015, after winning a competition organised by a US-based space academy.

He beat off a million other entrants from 75 countries to be selected as one of 23 people who will travel on an hour-long sub-orbital trip on the Lynx Mark II spaceship.

The former civil engineering student—who was forced to put his studies on hold because he could not pay the fees—will experience zero gravity and a journey that normally comes with a $100,000 price tag.

Unless a rich black African books a tourist space ticket and blasts off before next year, Maseko will become the first black African to enter space.

The "typical township boy", who still lives at home with his parents and four siblings, was named one of the winners on December 5, only a few hours after the death of the country's first black president, Nelson Mandela.

He said he immediately thought of such "firsts", not only Mandela but also Barack Obama, the first black president of the United States.

In his exhilaration, he also imagined a conversation with Mandela.

"I have run the race and completed the course, now here is the torch'," Maseko thought the president would have told him. "'Continue running the race and here's the title to go with it, go be the first black South African to space'."

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