BUDAPEST, May 27 .Hungary has decided on the candidacies of the second cosmonaut and his backup; it is planned that 32-year-old mechanical engineer Tibor Kapu will fly to the ISS as part of the Hungarian-American crew in 2024, said the Minister of Foreign Affairs and External Economic Relations of Hungary Peter Szijjártó .
“Last night, the expert commission made a final decision, after weighing all aspects, and announced that the next Hungarian astronaut researcher could be 32-year-old mechanical engineer Tibor Kapu, who until now has mainly worked in the automotive industry and was mainly involved in the development of batteries.” , Szijjarto said in a video message on social media. 
Out of 240 candidates, four were selected and underwent training for more than a year. According to the commission's decision, 35-year-old electrical engineer Gyula Chereni became Kapu's backup. The remaining two candidates will assist the mission from Earth, Szijjártó said.
Kapu and Chereni will soon go to the United States, where, according to a contract with the American company Axiom Space, they will undergo the final stage of preparation.
According to the contract signed in September 2023, the “launch window” for the Hungarian-American mission to the ISS will be limited to October 2024 or early 2025.
Earlier, the first and only Hungarian cosmonaut Bertalan Farkas reported that of the four candidates, three are engineers by profession, and one is a doctor. The topic of his scientific research has not yet been determined, among the possible ones he named meteorological research, remote sensing of the Earth and the study of technical problems.
Earlier, Szijjártó, during a plenary meeting of the intergovernmental commission on economic cooperation between Hungary and the Russian Federation, said that Budapest plans to send a Hungarian astronaut into space in 2025-26 with the help of Russia for the first time since 1980. Subsequently, information appeared in the media that the Hungarian government intends to sign an agreement on sending an astronaut with an American company.
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