Manama > The four-member crew of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-6, including UAE astronaut Sultan Al-Neyadi, landed on the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday following a one-day journey. NASA’s live webcast reported that the spacecraft flew together with the ISS at an altitude of regarding 250 miles (420 km) above Earth at a speed of 28,164 kilometers per hour. At 10:54 a.m. UAE time on Friday morning, the Dragon spacecraft named Endeavor completed the docking sequence with the ISS and following final checks, the astronauts entered the ISS at 12:50 p.m. and joined Expedition 68 with its seven other astronauts, NASA said. With this, there are 11 people in space. Four members of the first group will soon return to Earth. The spacecraft carrying them was launched on a SpaceX Falcon-9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 9.34am (11.04am IST) on Thursday. Along with Al Neyadi, the team includes NASA’s Stephen Bowen, Woody Hoberg, and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedayev. They will spend the next six months on the ISS. It is considered to be the longest space mission in the Arab world. It will see experiments ranging from growing human cells in space to controlling combustibles in microgravity. They are conducting more than 200 experiments that will help them prepare for missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond, and improve life on Earth, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said. Al Neyadi is the second astronaut from the UAE to go into space following Hassa Al Mansouri. Al-Mansoori spent eight days on the ISS in 2019. UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan said, “I join the nation in congratulating Sultan Al-Neyadi as he begins his historic mission to the International Space Station.” Read on deshabhimani.com
