About Marcos Pontes
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. On 30 March 2006, 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. Initially, Pontes' maiden space flight was scheduled to be on a Space Shuttle, where he was to help transport the ExPRESS Pallet, which would have been the International Space Station's first Brazilian-made component, into orbit. After the extinctive prescription of the investigation, Pontes became a majority partner of the company, with 80% of participation, while Christiane Corrêa kept 20% of participation.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.