Private mission with first female Saudi astronaut launches into space
TALLAHASSEE, Florida – Two Saudi astronauts, including a woman, flew into space Sunday as a private mission organized by Axion Space launched from the southern U.S. state of Florida.
Rayyanah Barnawi, a breast cancer researcher, is the first Saudi woman in space.
She is accompanied by her Saudi colleague Ali Al-Qarni, a fighter pilot, American astronaut Peggy Whitson and John Shoffner, a Tennessee businessman.
Shoffner is acting as a pilot for the mission.
“This is a dream come true for everyone. Just being able to understand that this is possible. If me and Ali can do it, then they can do it, too,” Barnawi told reporters.
Her accomplice Whitson is the station’s first female commander who holds the U.S. record of spending most time that is 665 days in space.
They are expected to spend about 10 days aboard the ISS.
The four-person team will conduct about 20 experiments while on the ISS. One of them is to study the behavior of stem cells in microgravity.
Barnawi said she is excited to be the first Saudi astronaut in space. She said she looks forward to sharing her experiences on the ISS with children.
Al-Qarni, who is a fighter pilot by profession, said he has “always had a passion to explore the unknown and just admire the sky and the stars”
In 1985, Prince Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, an Air Force pilot, took part in a U.S.-organized space trip.
The kingdom established the Saudi Space Commission in 2018 and last year launched a program to send astronauts into space.
They will join seven other astronauts already aboard the ISS: three Russians, three Americans, and Emirati astronaut Sultan al-Neyadi, who last month became the first Arab citizen to make a spacewalk.
The mission to the ISS will be the second under the partnership between NASA and Axiom Space.
The private spaceflight company offers rare trips for amounts in the millions of dollars.
Axiom Space conducted its first private astronaut mission to the ISS in April 2022, sending three businessmen and former astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria into orbit for 17 days.
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