The government of Saudi Arabia announced that two astronauts will fly to the International Space Station using a SpaceX rocket. One of them is Rayyanah Barnawi, the first female Arab astronaut to fly into outer space.
Reporting from Space.com, Wednesday (15/2/2023) Barnawi will be part of the Ax-2 mission which is the result of a collaboration between the government of Saudi Arabia and Axiom Space. The mission will fly to the ISS on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket in May 2023.
Apart from Barnawi, Saudi Arabia also chose astronaut Ali Al Qarni to take part in this mission. Both will be the first Saudi Arabian astronauts to fly to the ISS.
Barwani is a cancer researcher, while Al Qarni is a fighter pilot in the Saudi Arabian Air Force. The two of them will carry out 14 biomedical and physics experiments while on the ISS.
As the name implies, Ax-2 will be the second mission to the ISS hosted by Axiom Space. Its first mission, Ax-1, will send four people to the ISS over two weeks in April 2022.
The Ax-2 mission will also send four people to the ISS. The mission will be led by Peggy Whitson, a former NASA astronaut who is legendary for holding the record for being an American who spends the longest time in space (665 days).
The fourth crew member is John Shoffner, an investor who bought tickets for the trip. It's not known how much Shoffner paid for the ticket, but the Ax-1 mission charges $55 million for a seat.
The choice of Saudi Arabian astronauts for this mission is not surprising given that NASA and Axiom announced last year that two of the four crew members on this mission would be from the kingdom. But the identities of the two are still a mystery and have only been revealed now.
So far, only one Saudi Arabian has ever flown into space, namely Prince Sultan bin Salman Al Saud. He flew into space as part of mission STS-51-G on the space shuttle Discovery in 1985.
Al Saud was the first Arab, the first Muslim and the first royal to fly into orbit. Later, Barnawi and Al Qarni will become the second and third Arabs to fly into space.