The first Kazakh in NASA: the diaspora leader in the United States worked for 12 years in the space agency

The leader of the Kazakh diaspora in the United States, Darkhan Nurmagambet, worked for 12 years at the American Space Agency. He became the first Kazakh in NASA. Continuing to study new technologies, he does not forget his native land. This is stated in the video channel "Khabar 24".

Photo: Shutterstock

Darkhan's house in Washington County (Virginia) is called the Kazakh shanyrak. Creative evenings, warm meetings to the sounds of dombra and kobyz, dastarkhan with dishes of national cuisine have become a good tradition here. The owner of the house 15 years ago created the Kazakh-American Association and has since successfully led the Kazakh diaspora.

“I come from the Semipalatinsk region, from the small village of Bidaik, Chubartau district. Now the East Kazakhstan region is called. By the will of fate, in 2002, our whole family moved here to the States, and began our American part of life here with two children,” says Darkhan Nurmagambet. “We easily got a job here and, in principle, moved up quite quickly. Reliance on our basic education, which we received in Kazakhstan, probably played a role. I graduated from the physics department of Kazakh State University (now Al-Farabi Kazakh National University), and Ayauly’s wife is a graduate of the Semipalatinsk Institute, together we also graduated from KIMEP (Kazakh Institute of Management, Economics and Forecasting).”

Young and motivated graduates of the first English-language university in Central Asia found an interesting job - Darkhan became the head of the representative office of a Swiss company in Kazakhstan, and his wife worked as the financial director of Oracle Corporation.

In the US, luck smiled at them again. Nurmagambet became the first Kazakh employee of NASA. He was engaged in manned projects.

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“I was at almost all the Shuttle launches, went to Baikonur, to the launches of the Soyuz manned projects, to Cape Canaveral. There is the European Space Agency, they have their own spaceport in French Guiana (South America), where they mainly launch cargo projects,” he shared. “For 12 years, the greatest thing I have gained from working with specialists in the space industry is communicating with the people who are at the origins of the industry, who create these technologies.”

During a long contract with the American space agency, Darkhan was engaged in logistics of manned projects and solved problems arising at the stations.

“The American space business has now taken the commercial route. The giants who handled and received orders became clumsy and cumbersome. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is more flexible. He made a project that was much cheaper than other companies. He did what Kazakh scientists can do. You cannot constantly focus on some large companies with a historical past. We must boldly go and see what can replace them, taking into account current technologies. The future lies in automation and robotization of processes that we do manually,” says Nurmagambet.

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All these years, Darkhan and Ayauly have not broken ties with their homeland. More than 10 years ago, they opened the Canadian-American Association, since then the diaspora has been celebrating national holidays together, and has not forgotten its native language and folk traditions. The Nurmagambet family opened Kazakh classrooms for children and adults.

He proudly talks about the successes of the Balausa choir, which Ayauly created together with other representatives of the diaspora. The group becomes popular and performs on prestigious stages in the USA.

“Over the 15 years of my life, the only question that former residents of the Soviet Union ask me is: “What are you even doing here?” It’s so good in Kazakhstan.” I think this is probably one of the merits of Kazakhstan, why we are here. Because the country is open. Many come here as refugees. They have no connections with their homeland, they are bored,” he says.

The family says that guests often gather under the Kazakh shanyrak and certainly talk about the wonderful creations of Kazakh artists, admiring the native landscapes. The house has two old dombra and kobyz, which was already bought in the United States.

“We are trying to collect paintings by Kazakh artists at American auctions,” said the leader of the Kazakh diaspora in the United States.

Kazakhstanis are not indifferent to the processes of modernization in their homeland and are full of plans to bring it closer to the United States through scientific and technological cooperation and partnership.

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