The men’s personal care product company AXE, belonging to the British–Dutch company Unilever, is selecting 22 qualified people from 63 countries, including Vietnam, to launch them into space under a program scheduled for early 2014.   In Vietnam, AXE is coordinating with the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union in selecting a Vietnamese person who is qualified to become a space traveler, the second after Pham Tuan, who became the first Asian in space when he flew aboard the Soviet Union’s Soyuz 37 on July 23, 1980. The qualified person will join 21 other people from other countries to go into space under the AXE Apollo Program. Candidates can complete an online registration at www.axeapollo.com or at the “AXE Apollo Space Station” in four major cities: Hanoi, Danang, HCMC and Can Tho. Accordingly, Vietnamese citizens between the ages of 18 and 35 of both sexes can take part in the selection process, which will screen participants in the preliminary round to select 100 qualified candidates. These candidates will undergo physical examinations at the Airline Medical Institute as well as English tests and, based on the results of the examination and test, the examiners will make a short list of the 15 most outstanding candidates. In the final round, one of these 15 candidates will be selected to represent Vietnam to take part in a 2-week training course at the Axe Global Space Training Camp in the US in December 2013, along with the representatives of the other countries. After the course, the 22 most outstanding candidates from 63 countries will be selected as qualified space travelers, who will be launched aboard a suborbital Lynx space plane built by the US company XCOR Aerospace and operated by the tourism firm Space Expedition Curacao in January 2014, AXE officials said. In a space flight lasting two hours, these astronauts will experience a non-gravity state and will have a chance to see the Earth from a distance of 1,110 kilometers as well as enjoy other fascinating experiences in space. At a ceremony held in HCMC yesterday to launch the selection of a space traveler, Lieutenant General Pham Tuan said, “Seeing the Earth from space is a special experience that cannot be expressed enough in words. I believe that it’s time for Vietnam to have a second person fly into space.”