Marcos Pontes is the first Brazilian astronaut in space

Marcos Cesar Pontes is a Brazilian Air Force pilot, engineer, AEB astronaut, politician and author. He 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. He 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. After Jair Bolsonaro's election as President of Brazil in 2018, Pontes was officially nominated to be Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, a post which he accepted days later and assumed when Bolsonaro's government began. He left the post on 31 March 2022 and in the same year was elected federal senator for his state, São Paulo.