Saudi Arabian biomedical scientist is already the first Arab woman to orbit Earth
Saudi scientist Rayyanah Barnawi, 33, is the first woman from an Arab nation to travel into outer space, become a tenant of the International Space Station (ISS) and circle the Earth aboard the orbiting complex located nearly 400 kilometres above the Earth's surface.
She and Royal Saudi Air Force fighter pilot Captain Ali Al-Qarni, 31, have made it to the ISS with NASA's full blessing on a 16-hour private flight chartered by the US company Axiom.
They did so in the Crew Dragon space capsule named Freedom, which lifted off from Kennedy Space Centre on 22 May, anchored to the top of a Space X Falcon 9 launcher.
Pilot of the F-15SA air superiority fighter, Captain Ali Al-Qarni has accumulated 2,387 flight hours. He and his partner passed a rigorous selection process organised by the Saudi Space Commission last February and were then sent to NASA's Johnson Space Center for astronaut training.
The arrival of the two Saudis at the orbital complex brings to three the number of Arabs currently in outer space. They were joined on the ISS by the Emirati Sultan Al Neyadi, who arrived on 2 March and will remain there until the end of the year. The two Saudis, on the other hand, will stay for little more than a week, as the Saudi Space Commission's contract with Axiom stipulates that they must return to Earth on 30 April, unless there is force majeure.
Breast cancer researcher
Waiting for them on board the ISS were the seven astronauts of Expedition 69: Americans Frank Rubio, Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg; Russians Dimitri Petelin, Sergei Prokopiev and Andrei Fediaev; and the aforementioned Emirati Sultan Al Neyadi.
The two Saudis are the first people from the Land of the Two Holy Mosques in the 21st century to be able to see our blue planet from outer space. Dr Barnawi has worked for more than a decade on breast cancer stem cell research projects at the King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre in Riyadh, the capital of the great Arabian Peninsula country.
One of the experiments the biomedical scientist is already conducting on the ISS focuses on studying the inflammatory response of human immune cells under microgravity conditions. The test aims to help determine changes in messenger RNA (mRNA), a genetic material that carries information about how to make proteins from the DNA in the cell nucleus to the cell's cytoplasm.
Captain Al Qarni also takes part in several scheduled experiments. One is to evaluate a compression suit designed in conjunction with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to alleviate the negative effects of microgravity, preferably muscle atrophy. Another is seeding artificial clouds, in an attempt to increase rainfall levels in certain areas of the desert Middle Eastern country.
The two Saudis have flown on the Axiom 2 mission, and were accompanied to the ISS by a veteran retired NASA professional astronaut as mission commander: 63-year-old biochemist Peggy Whitson, for whom this is her fourth space mission. She retired from the Agency in 2018 after no less than 665 days in space.
Two Saudi Arabian and one Emirati astronaut in orbit
The presence of a veteran astronaut is indispensable for NASA to approve a space launch. The Agency requires Axiom and any other company wishing to carry out private missions to the ISS to have at least one experienced astronaut aboard the manned capsule.
The fourth crew member of the Axiom 2 mission is American billionaire John Shoffner, 67, a racing car driver. He is travelling as a space tourist, having paid an amount that remains secret, but is estimated to be in the region of $55 million.
The director general of the Mohammed bin Rashid Emirates Space Centre, Salem Al Marri, has congratulated Saudi Arabia on the successful launch, describing it as a "remarkable milestone", bringing three Arab astronauts into orbit for the first time in space history.
The UAE ranks first in the Arab world in successful space projects, with a probe around Mars, two astronauts with spaceflight experience, an unsuccessful attempt to reach the moon and several major projects in the pipeline.
But Saudi Arabia also aspires to be a major player in manned space exploration initiatives. The Riyadh government is seeking partnerships to give its compatriots the opportunity to take part in NASA's Artemis mission to the moon and, in the much longer term, to Mars.
A total of 14 astronauts are currently living in orbit, 13 men and one woman: the 11 tenants of the ISS and the three Chinese living on the Tiangong space station: Fei Junlong, Zhang Lu and Deng Qingming.
