Saudi Arabia to send its first woman into space

Saudi Arabia will ship its first ever girl astronaut on a space mission later this yr, the most recent transfer by the dominion to revamp its ultra-conservative picture.

Rayyana Barnawi will be a part of fellow Saudi Ali Al-Qarni on a 10-day mission to the Worldwide House Station (ISS), the official Saudi Press Company (SPA) mentioned.

Barnawi and Al-Qarni will fly to the ISS aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft as a part of a mission this spring by the non-public space firm Axiom House, SPA and Axiom mentioned.

Additionally on board Ax-2 will probably be Peggy Whitson, a former NASA astronaut who will probably be making her fourth flight to the ISS, and John Shoffner, a businessman from Tennessee who will function pilot.

The Ax-2 crew will probably be launched to the ISS by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complicated 39A at NASA’s Kennedy House Heart in Florida.

Oil-rich Saudi Arabia will probably be following within the footsteps of the neighboring United Arab Emirates, which in 2019 turned the primary Arab nation to ship one among its residents into space.

Astronaut Hazzaa al-Mansoori spent eight days on the ISS. One other fellow Emirati, Sultan al-Neyadi, will even make a voyage to the space station later this month.

Nicknamed the “Sultan of House”, the 41-year-old Neyadi will change into the primary Arab astronaut to spend six months in space when he blasts off for the ISS aboard a Falcon 9 rocket.

Gulf monarchies have been in search of to diversify their energy-reliant economies by a plethora of initiatives.

Saudi de facto chief Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has additionally been making an attempt to shake off the dominion’s austere picture by a push for reforms.

Since his rise to energy in 2017, ladies have been allowed to drive and to journey overseas and not using a male guardian, and their proportion within the workforce has greater than doubled since 2016, from 17 p.c to 37 p.c.

Saudi Arabia’s foray into space shouldn’t be its first, nevertheless.

In 1985, Saudi royal Prince Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, an air power pilot, took half in a US-organized space mission, changing into the primary Arab Muslim to journey into space.

In 2018, Saudi Arabia arrange a space program and final yr launched one other to ship astronauts into space, all a part of Prince Salman’s Imaginative and prescient 2030 agenda for financial diversification.

Axiom House carried out its first non-public astronaut mission to the ISS in April 2022. 4 non-public astronauts spent 17 days in orbit as a part of Ax-1.

© 2023 AFP