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Private mission carrying Saudi astronauts launches to ISS
CAPE CANAVERAL - The second-ever private mission to the International Space Station (ISS), organised by Axiom Space, blasted off from Florida on Sunday, carrying the first two Saudi astronauts to travel to the orbiting laboratory.
Rayyanah Barnawi, a breast cancer researcher, is the first Saudi woman to voyage into space and is joined on the mission by fellow Saudi Ali Al-Qarni, a fighter pilot.
The Axiom Mission 2 (Ax-2) crew took off aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral in the southern US state of Florida at 5:37 pm (2137 GMT).
The team also includes Peggy Whitson, a former NASA astronaut who will be making her fourth flight to the ISS, and John Shoffner, a businessman from Tennessee who is serving as pilot.
The crew is due to spend around 10 days on board the ISS, where they should arrive around 9:25 am Monday.
"Being the first Saudi woman astronaut, representing the region, it's a great pleasure and honour that I'm very happy to carry," said Barnawi at a recent press conference.
| Gregg Newton
She added that, aside from excitement for the research she will carry out on board, she was looking forward to sharing her experience with kids while on the ISS.
"Being able to see their faces when they see astronauts from their own region for the first time is very thrilling," she said.
The mission is not Saudi Arabia's first foray into space.
In 1985, Prince Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, an air force pilot, took part in a US-organized space voyage.
But the space mission involving a Saudi woman is the latest move by the oil-rich Gulf kingdom, where women only gained the right to drive a few years ago, to revamp its ultraconservative image.
The kingdom established the Saudi Space Commission in 2018 and launched a program last year to send astronauts into space.
The four-member team is set to carry out some 20 experiments while on the ISS.
One of them involves studying the behaviour of stem cells in zero gravity.
They will join seven others already aboard the ISS: three Russians, three Americans and Emirati astronaut Sultan al-Neyadi, who was the first Arab national to go on a spacewalk last month.