Two astronauts from Saudi Arabia, including the first Saudi woman, will blast off from Florida on May 8 on a private charge to the International Space Station (ISS), Axiom Space and NASA officers said Thursday.
Rayyanah Barnawi, a bone cancer experimenter, will come the first Saudi woman to passage into space and will be joined on the charge by fellow Saudi Ali Al-Qarni, a fighter airman.
Also on board will be Peggy Whitson, a former NASA astronaut who’ll be making her fourth flight to the ISS, and John Shoffner, a businessman from Tennessee who’ll serve as airman.
Takeoff of Axiom Mission 2 (Ax-2) aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is listed for 10:43 pm Eastern Time on May 8 (08:13 am IST on May 9) from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Axiom Space and NASA officers said in a briefing to exercise the flight.
The four-member crew will travel to the ISS aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule and spend 10 days aboard the ringing space station.
The charge to the ISS will be the alternate by Axiom Space, a private space company.
Axiom Space carried out its first private astronaut charge to the ISS in April 2022. Four astronauts spent 17 days in route as part of Ax-1.
The space charge involving a Saudi woman is the rearmost move by the area to revamp itsultra-conservative image.
But it isn’t the oil painting-rich area’s first incursion into space.
In 1985, Prince Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, an air force airman, took part in a US- organized space passage.
The neighboring United Arab Emirates has also taken part in space operations and an Emirati astronaut, Sultan al-Neyadi, arrived on the ISS a month ago for a six-month stay.
