On April 6, 2024, Belarusian female cosmonaut Marina Vasilevskaya returned safely to Earth from the ISS. For her courage and personal contribution to space exploration, Aleksandr Lukashenko awarded her the title of Hero of Belarus on April 11.
Commenting on the significance of Marina Vasilevskaya’s spaceflight, both Grigory Azarenok and Piotr Petrovsky said on the air of the program “Azarenok. Napryamuyu” on April 10, that all over the world, there are about 15 countries, that have launched their astronauts into space and built nuclear power plants as well.
Here is what their discussion looked like:
“Do we understand that Belarus, for example, is one of the world's 15 countries that exploits peaceful atoms and nuclear energy? From 15 countries. 15 out of 200. In general, we somehow talk very little about our achievements,” Azarenok said.
“How many countries are performed in the space [programs — ed.]?” Petrovsky asked.
“And in space, even less,” the presenter replied.
Then, Piotr Petrovsky covered the same topic on Radio Minsk on April 8:
“And who? What country of 9–10 million people could boast of its astronauts? None. Now, the Poles, seems, [Miroslav — ed.] Germashevsky from Polish People's Republic flew, by the way, with the Belarusian Klimuk, that's the point. And what about some Belgian, Dutch, Austrian cosmonaut to fly? I don’t remember anything like that. And there was not even any talk about it. That’s what Western politics is all about, all that classifying countries to the high and low ones.”
In fact, all over the world, there are 32 countries that have produced nuclear energy, not 15. Thus, 32 countries have nuclear power plants on the planet.
The global list of astronauts and cosmonauts includes representatives from more than 15 countries. Belgium had two astronauts: the first flew in 1992, and the second performed two spaceflights — in 2002 and 2009.
The same is true for the Netherlands: the first astronaut flew into space back in 1985, the second — in 2004 and 2011. A representative from Austria was launched into space in 1991.
