A private mission organized by the company Axiom Space is scheduled to take off Sunday, May 21 to the International Space Station (ISS), with on board the first two Saudis to go to this flying laboratory, including a woman. Rayana Barnawi and Ali Al-Qarni will lift off aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 17:37 p.m. local time from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
They will be accompanied by two other crew members. Peggy Whitson, a former NASA astronaut who has already visited the ISS three times, commands the mission. American entrepreneur John Shoffner serves as pilot. They will spend about 10 days aboard the International Space Station (ISS), where they are scheduled to arrive around 13:30 p.m. on Monday.
'Exploring the unknown'
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Being the first Saudi woman astronaut, and representing the region, is a great pleasure and honor that I am very happy to have," Rayana Barnawi, a scientist by training, told a news conference this week. She said she looks forward to talking to children from the ISS: "Being able to see their faces when they see astronauts from their own region for the first time is very exciting," she said.
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 it's a wonderful opportunity for me to pursue that passion, and this time to fly among the stars." The oil-rich state has sent one of its nationals into space in the past. In 1985, Saudi Prince Sultan bin Salman participated in an American mission.
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But this new space trip is part of the ultra-conservative kingdom's strategy to improve the image of the country, where women were still not allowed to drive only a few years ago. Saudi Arabia established the Saudi Space Authority in 2018 and last year launched a program to send astronauts into space.
Scientific experiments
The four crew members must conduct about twenty experiments during their stay. One of them is to study the behaviour of stem cells in weightlessness. 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 Arab national to go out into space. This mission, named Ax-2, is the second in a partnership between the American space agency (which opens the doors of the ISS) and Axiom Space, which offers these extraordinary stays for amounts that count in millions of dollars.
The company is responsible for the training of apprentice astronauts, chartering the means of transport, and the smooth running of their stay. A first mission, Ax-1, took three businessmen and a former astronaut, Michael Lopez-Alegria, to spend two weeks on the International Space Station in April 2022.
Some astronauts then aboard the ISS had said they had to take their time - precious in weightlessness - to take care of these space tourists. "My time is less constrained than Mike Lopez-Alegria on the first mission," said Commander Peggy Whitson. "So I will be available to help the crew more.
»Private space stations
For Axiom Space, these missions are a first step towards an ambitious goal: the construction of its own space station, the first module of which is due to be launched at the end of 2025. The structure will first be attached to the ISS, before separating from it to take off independently.
NASA plans to retire the ISS around 2030, and instead send its astronauts to private stations -- which will also host their own customers. The US space agency thus encourages the programs of several companies. Russia recently pledged to extend the duration of the ISS until 2028, after threatening an earlier withdrawal after the start of the war in Ukraine, raising the question of its survival. The other international partners - Japan, Canada, the European Space Agency - have committed themselves like the United States to continue operations until 2030.
