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Hind Aqeel, the wife of Syrian astronaut and Maj. Gen. Mohammad Fares, renewed her call for the return of his space suit after it was photographed lying on a street in Damascus on the day Bashar al-Assad’s regime fell.
The Syrian opposition National Coalition and Syrian activists later announced that Fares had died at 73 following an illness in a hospital in Gaziantep.
Syrian astronaut Mohammad Fares died at the age of 73 in 2024, following a battle with illness in a hospital in the Turkish city of Gaziantep.
In a statement, the Syrian National Coalition described Fares as “Syria’s loss,” noting that he sided with the Syrian revolution shortly after it began in 2011 and did not change his stance until his death.
Fares was Syria’s first astronaut. In 1987, he flew with two Russian cosmonauts to the Soviet space station Mir.
Aqeel said the suit represents a national legacy that documents an important chapter in Syria’s scientific history.
Aqeel posted a photo of two suits, one belonging to her husband and the other to his colleague, Mounir Habib. She said both had been kept at the National Museum in Damascus before someone photographed them lying on the road on the day of “liberation” and sent the image to her. It remains unclear how they were taken out of the museum.
She added that she contacted the relevant authorities to recover the suits but received no response.
In January 2025, Italian photojournalist Sergio Ramazzotti published a photo showing an armed man standing in front of the two space suits on a street in Damascus.
He said they were among the items found after the People’s Palace was stormed on the day the regime fell, adding that Bashar al-Assad had kept them inside the palace.
Hind’s appeal drew widespread attention on social media, with activists urging the government to open an investigation into how the two suits went missing and to intensify efforts to locate and recover them, both in tribute to astronaut Mohammad Fares as one of Syria’s scientific icons and to honor Syrians’ contributions to humanity’s scientific legacy.
Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ahmad Fares was born in Aleppo in 1951. A graduate of the Military Academy, where he later served as an instructor, he was a former Syrian air force officer and a former military adviser in Syria.
He was Syria’s first astronaut and the Arab world’s second to travel to space, after Saudi astronaut Prince Sultan bin Salman.
The British newspaper The Guardian dubbed Fares the “Arab Armstrong.” He flew as a research cosmonaut aboard the Soviet spacecraft Soyuz TM-3 on July 22, 1987, as part of the crew’s first visit to the Russian orbital space station Mir.
After joining the Syrian uprising and leaving Syria for Türkiye, Fares took part in many events and demonstrations in support of the revolution.
He also participated in conferences, meetings and lectures at Turkish universities and attended the opening of a children’s science exhibition in Gaziantep province in 2019, alongside Fatma Shahin, the city’s mayor.
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