Arab astronaut set to make space station history

For the first time, an Arab country is sending an astronaut to the International Space Station for an extended stay on SpaceX’s Crew-6 mission set to launch from Kennedy Space Center next week.

Sultan AlNeyadi of the United Arab Emirates will become the nation’s first long-term visitor to the station when a Falcon 9 topped with the Crew Dragon Endeavour takes off from Launch Pad 39-A, with a targeted liftoff moved from Sunday morning to 1:45 a.m. on Monday.

“It’s exciting to have another country’s astronaut onboard, and it’s exciting to expand human spaceflight across the globe,” said NASA ISS program manager Joel Montalbano. To date, 263 people from 20 countries have been on board the ISS, which has been continuously occupied since November 2000.

Mission specialist AlNeyadi is one of three space rookies for Crew-6, with only commander and NASA astronaut Stephen Bowen having ventured off-planet during three space shuttle missions. The crew also includes first-time flyers NASA astronaut and pilot Woody Hoburg and Roscosmos cosmonaut and mission specialist Andrey Fedyaev. They’re set to spend about 180 days on the station and become part of the ISS Expedition 68 and 69 while in orbit.

“Six months, long duration, first Arab mission — I think it’s a great privilege yet it’s a great responsibility,” AlNeyadi said during a crew briefing earlier this month. “Just the idea of waking up every morning and having the access to a window like the cupola, I think it’s literally out of this world. You can see and scan the whole world in 90 minutes, which is amazing.”

His enthusiasm, though, is tempered with the full plate of work ahead of science and outreach.

“We are subjects ourselves. We have a lot of sensors on us when we do experiments. They log our sleep. They log our vascular activities, breathing and so on,” he said. “We have a range of other experiments like material science and bioscience. The overall six months is going to be really busy.”

As a Muslim, his stay will include the holy month of Ramadan, but AlNeyadi said the tradition of fasting during the day and eating at night isn’t so cut and dry in space, as he falls under the religion’s definition of a “traveler.”

“Fasting is not compulsory … So in that regard, anything that can jeopardize the mission or maybe put the crew member [at] risk, we’re actually allowed to eat sufficient food and to prevent any escalation of a lack of food or nutrition or hydration,” he said. “So in that regard, we will be safe. If we have an opportunity, definitely Ramadan is a good occasion to fast and it’s actually healthy.

He said he would probably share some UAE meals with his crewmates.

The quartet, who arrived in Florida on Tuesday to prep for the weekend liftoff, are set to replace the four members of Crew-5. They have been orbiting Earth since October and plan to return to Earth in Crew Dragon Freedom in early March for a splashdown off the Florida coast.

AlNeyadi is only the second UAE astronaut to fly to space, and the fourth from an Arab nation.

The first UAE astronaut was Hazzaa AlMansoori who flew to the space station for an eight-day stay in 2019 in a Soyuz capsule riding with Russian cosmonauts. AlNeyadi and AlMansoori were the first two selected for the country’s program when it put the call out in 2017, chosen in 2018 among 4,000 applicants.

“When Hazzaa went to space, it was the opening toward a continuous presence in space for the UAE and it was actually a promise from our prime minister to continue these flights,” AlNeyadi said, noting that since then a new astronaut class has been named and is already in training with NASA. “We raised up the bar.”

The UAE’s space program has a lot of parts in play. It launched a probe to Mars in 2020 that successfully entered orbit in 2021 and earlier this year sent a rover as a passenger on a commercial lunar lander that aims to touch down on the moon’s surface in April.

Those missions along with Earth observation satellites and its growing astronaut plans are the realization of the four facets of the UAE space center that was established in 2006. Its new astronaut class includes the country’s first woman as well.

“This was really a push from the UAE to say that we want to be a long-term player in human spaceflight,” said the Mohammaed Bin Rashid Space Centre Director General Salem AlMarri.

For this mission, the center will have AlNeyadi performing 20 science experiments for UAE universities and institutions while also participating in public affairs outreach with students and others.

“Sultan is a very capable astronaut,” AlMarri said. “He’s been training in NASA for the past three years. Altogether, he’s got over five years of training. He was backup for AlMansoori and went through the whole process for that type of mission.

“He’s also capable and fully trained in EVAs [space walks], fully trained in operations of the ISS, and we hope that he can be a very active participant in this flight.”

The UAE is at the forefront of Arab nations’ expansion into space, but Saudi Arabia will soon be flying a pair of astronauts including the first woman from an Arab nation, to the ISS for a short stay as members of Axiom Space’s Ax-2 mission that could fly as early as May.

The first Arab in space was Prince Sultan bin Salman Al Saud, who was part of STS-51-G crew on board Space Shuttle Discovery in 1985 while a Syrian astronaut Muhammed Faris flew to Russian space station Mir in 1987.

AlNeyadi said he expects the UAE to keep growing as a major partner with NASA for missions to come.

“We are looking toward missions further into space are looking to join Artemis hopefully in the future. I would love to see a UAE flag on the lunar surface carried on the shoulder of a UAE astronaut,” he said. “Yes I think the UAE is doing a very good job and in the coming 10 years I think we’ll be following the international efforts toward going to space and pushing the boundaries of exploration.”

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