A contest was held yesterday at the Military Zone 7 Gymnasium in Ho Chi Minh City to directly test 100 short-listed candidates out of thousands of initial applicants. One of them would finally be chosen to fly into space.

Besides health criteria, the contestants had to overcome 4 out of 5 challenges including space balance, space jump, moon’s gravity, multi-dimensional rotating chamber and reverse space.

This program titled “Finding 2nd Vietnamese to fly into space” is sponsored by AXE, a brand belonging to British-Dutch company Unilever.

The 100 contestants will undergo a physical examination and an English test. Only 15 most qualified participants will be short-listed for a reality TV scheduled for October 2013.

In all, 22 qualified participants will be selected from 63 countries, including Vietnam, to join the said program which is expected to launch them into space in early 2014.

The competition was open to Vietnamese aged from 18 to 35 of both sexes.

In Vietnam, Unilever’s AXE is coordinating with the Ho Chi Minh City Youth Union to select the most outstanding Vietnamese to take part in the space flight which is supported by the US Space Expedition Corporation and will take place at Curacao airport, the first spacecraft location outside the US.

The 22 most outstanding candidates from the world will join a 2-week training course at the Axe Global Space Training Camp in the US in December 2013. After this course, they will be aboard the spacecraft for two hours, experiencing a non-gravity state and will have a chance to see the earth from a distance of 1,110 kilometers.