Source : Map
29/04/2022 12:00
An Emirati astronaut will be sent into space for a six-month mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS), the Vice President of the United Arab Emirates and ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashed al-Maktoum announced on Friday. .
A “new milestone” has been reached with “the signing of a new agreement to send the first Arab astronaut for a 180-day long mission to the International Space Station”, wrote Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashed al-Maktoum on his account Tweeter.
“I am proud of the youth of the Emirates,” he added.
According to the Emirati daily “The National”, the agreement was signed on Wednesday between the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Center (MBRSC) and Axiom Space, at the Embassy of the Emirates in Washington.
The astronaut will be part of the SpaceX Crew-6 mission, which is scheduled for launch in 2023, according to the same source.
A first Emirati was sent into space in September 2019 for an eight-day mission, aboard a Soyuz rocket from the Russian Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
In July of the same year, the country launched, from the Japanese space center in Tanegashima, an unmanned spacecraft carrying the “Hope” probe around the orbit of Mars, as part of the first interplanetary mission of the Arab world. .
The Emirates also plans to send an unmanned rover to the moon by 2024.