Rayana Barnawi and Ali Al-Qarni will launch this Sunday along with two other crew members as part of a private mission aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
By Le Figaro with AFP
Published 5/21/2023 at 10:27 AM, updated 5/21/2023 at 10:27 AM
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The Ax-2 crew: Rayyanah Barnawi, John Shoffner, Peggy Whitson and Ali Alqarni (left to right), May 19, 2023. Handout / AXIOM SPACE
A private mission organized by the company Axiom Space is scheduled to take off for the International Space Station (ISS) on Sunday, May 21, with the first two Saudis on board going to this flying laboratory, including a woman. Rayana Barnawi and Ali Al-Qarni will launch at 5:37 p.m. local time aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
You will be accompanied by two other crew members. The mission will be led by Peggy Whitson, a former NASA astronaut who has been to the ISS three times. The American entrepreneur John Shoffner acts as the pilot. They will spend about ten days aboard the International Space Station (ISS), arriving there around 1:30 p.m. on Monday.
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“Exploring the Unknown”
“It is my great pleasure and honor to be the first Saudi female astronaut and to represent the region,” Rayana Barnawi, a scientist by training, said at a news conference this week. She said she looks forward to speaking to children from the ISS: “It’s very exciting to be able to see their faces when they see astronauts from their own region for the first time.”
In everyday life, Ali Al-Qarni is a fighter pilot. “I’ve always had a passion for exploring the unknown and admiring the sky and the stars,” he explained. “So this is a wonderful opportunity for me to pursue this passion and this time fly between the stars.” The oil-rich state has sent one of its nationals into space in the past. In 1985, the Saudi Prince Sultan bin Salman took part in an American mission.
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But this new type of space travel is part of the arch-conservative kingdom’s strategy to improve the country’s image, where women were not allowed to drive a few years ago. Saudi Arabia established the Saudi Space Authority in 2018 and launched a program to send astronauts into space last year.
scientific experiences
The four crew members have to carry out around twenty experiments during their stay. One of them is to study the behavior of stem cells in microgravity. They will join the seven passengers already aboard the ISS: three Russians, three Americans and Emirati astronaut Sultan al-Neyadi, who last month became the first citizen of an Arab country to go into space. Dubbed Ax-2, this mission is the second in a partnership between the US Space Agency (which opens the doors to the ISS) and Axiom Space, which is offering these extraordinary stays for millions of dollars.
The company is responsible for the training of the astronaut apprentices, the chartering of the means of transport and the smooth running of their stay. A first mission, Ax-1, saw three businessmen and a former astronaut, Michael Lopez-Alegria, spend two weeks on the International Space Station in April 2022.
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Some astronauts who were aboard the ISS at the time said they had to take their precious time in zero gravity to take care of these space tourists. “My time is less limited than Mike Lopez-Alegria’s on the first mission,” affirmed Commander Peggy Whitson. “So I remain available to further assist the crew.”
Private Space Stations
For Axiom Space, these missions are a first step towards an ambitious goal: building its own space station, the first module of which is scheduled to launch in late 2025. The structure will first be attached to the ISS before departing separately to fly independently.
NASA plans to decommission the ISS around 2030 and instead send its astronauts to private stations that will also house their own customers. The American space agency therefore supports the programs of several companies. Russia recently pledged to extend the ISS’s lifetime to 2028 after threatening an earlier withdrawal after the start of the war in Ukraine, raising questions about its survival. The other international partners – Japan, Canada, the European Space Agency – have also committed to continue operations until 2030, as has the United States.