First Saudi woman travels to space
A private rocket carrying the first Arab woman astronaut has blasted off on a mission to the International Space Station (ISS).
Rayyanah Barnawi, a breast cancer researcher, is the first Saudi woman to voyage into space and is joined on the mission by fellow Saudi Ali Al-Qarni, a fighter pilot.
The Axiom Mission 2 (Ax-2) crew took off aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral at 5:37pm (2137 GMT) on Sunday.
The team also includes Peggy Whitson, a former Nasa astronaut, who will be making her fourth flight to the ISS, and John Shoffner, a businessman from Tennessee, who is piloting.
"Thanks for putting your trust in the Falcon 9 team," SpaceX chief engineer Bill Gerstenmaier told the crew minutes after lift-off.
"Hope you enjoyed the ride to space. Have a great trip on Dragon," he added, referring to the spacecraft. "Welcome home to zero-g, Peggy."
The capsule docked at the ISS around 9:25 am (1325 GMT) yesterday. The crew is due to spend around 10 days on board the ISS.
"Being the first Saudi woman astronaut, representing the region, it's a great pleasure and honor that I'm very happy to carry," Barnawi said at a recent press conference.
She added that, aside from the research she will carry out on board, she was looking forward to sharing her experience on the ISS with kids.
"Being able to see their faces when they see astronauts from their own region for the first time is very thrilling," she said.
A career fighter pilot, Al-Qarni said he has "always had the passion of exploring the unknown and just admiring the sky and the stars."
"It is a great opportunity for me to pursue this kind of passion that I have, and now maybe just fly among the stars."
The mission is not Saudi Arabia's first foray into space. In 1985, Prince Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, an air force pilot, took part in a US-organized space voyage.
"I reflect on my experience in space many years ago, and I am happy that Saudi Arabia has returned to space once again," he told AFP at a watch party for the Ax-2 launch in Riyadh.
The space mission involving a Saudi woman is the latest move by the country, where women only gained the right to drive a few years ago, to revamp its ultraconservative image.
The oil-rich Gulf kingdom established the Saudi Space Commission in 2018 and launched a program last year to send astronauts into space.