UAE's Sultan AlNeyadi joins other astronauts in a SpaceX's Crew-6 mission to fly to the ISS and spend six months on it.
The International Space Station or ISS will soon welcome its first astronaut from an Arab nation to spend a long-duration mission there. On Monday, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) announced that their astronaut, Sultan AlNeyadi will join SpaceX's Crew-6 mission, which is expected to lift off in Spring 2023.
"My selection as the first Arab astronaut for a long-duration mission is a great honor and responsibility that I accept with a strong desire to raise the UAE flag high in space once more," AlNeyadi took to Twitter to share after UAE Vice President Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum made the announcement on the social network.
This will not be the first time an Emirati astronaut visits the ISS however, as Hazza Al Mansoori had traveled to the orbiting lab aboard a Hazza Al Mansoori that took off in Fall 2019. Al Mansoori stayed for a total of eight days, but AlNeyadi will stay on the ISS for up to six months, Space.com reported.
Who is United Arab Emirates Astronaut Sultan AlNeyadi?
The United Arab Emirates first selected AlNeyadi and AlMansoori back in 2018, at a time when the UAE was relatively new to spaceflight. Both astronauts completed spaceflight training at NASA for AlMansoori's mission in 2019, during which AlNeyadi served as backup.
AlNeyadi, who is now 41, worked as a network security engineer for the UAE Armed Forces and holds a Ph.D. in information technology before becoming an astronaut. His International Astronomical Federation biography says that he was also trained in Moscow, Russia, and Cologne, Germany and has completed more than 90 courses spanning more than 1,400 training hours.
Now, AlNeyadi has completed around two years of basic astronaut candidate training in spacewalks and will be tasked with "many in-depth and advanced scientific experiments as part of the UAE astronaut program," a press release from the UAE vice president's office said.
AlNeyadi is one of several NASA astronauts who will come aboard SpaceX's Crew-6 mission, including Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg who will serve as spacecraft commander and pilot, respectively. Andrei Fedyaev, a Roscosmos cosmonaut, will also join AlNeyadi and the rest of the crew after a seat swap deal with Russia's federal space agency and NASA to transport cosmonauts aboard private American vehicles in exchange for seats in the US Soyuz.
A spot on the SpaceX Crew-6 mission became available for AlNeyadi because of an Axiom Space exchange with NASA, who traded the Crew-6 slot for an Axiom seat on Soyuz, which was filled by NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei. He returned to Earth in March after an American record-breaking 355-days on the ISS.
Read Also: NASA is Planning to Buy 5 More SpaceX Crewed Flights to the ISS
Other Notable Astronauts from UAE Make History
AlNeyadi and Al Mansouri are not the only notable UAE astronauts to have flown to space. While the 38 year old Al Mansouri was the first Emirati astronaut in space and the first Arab on the ISS, Nora Al Matrooshi made history as the first Arab woman to be selected as an astronaut, National News reported.
Al Matrooshi is a 29 year old mechanical engineer who joined UAE's astronaut corps in 2021 and began her training in Houston in January. Finally, Mohammed Al Mulla is a 34 year old pilot with more than 1,500 flight hours from Dubai who also served as a pilot at Dubai Police's Air Wing Centre. Named the youngest pilot in Dubai Police at the age of 19 years, Al Mulla hopes to one day explore the moon.
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