Saudi, US astronauts splash down on return from space station

World
By William

Rayyanah Barnawi of Saudi Arabia, a biomedical scientist in cancer research, is the first Arab woman to be sent into space.

A private spaceflight carrying a team of two Saudi and two American astronauts — including the first Arab woman to be sent into orbit — has crash-landed safely in the Gulf of Mexico following a research mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS). ).

The SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule that carried the team parachuted into the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Panama City, Florida, on Tuesday night after a 12-hour return flight after 10 days in orbit.

The splashdown was performed live by a joint webcast hosted by SpaceX and the company behind the mission, Axiom Space.

The return to Earth marked the end of the second space station mission organized, equipped and trained entirely at private expense by Axiom, a seven-year Houston venture led by NASA’s former ISS program manager.

The Axiom 2 crew was led by retired NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, 63, who holds the US record for the most time spent in orbit with 665 days in space during three long-duration missions to the ISS, including 10 spacewalks. She now serves as Axiom’s director of human spaceflight.

“That was a phenomenal ride. We really enjoyed it,” Whitson radioed mission controllers shortly after landing.

The Ax-2’s designated pilot was John Shoffner, 67, an Alaskan aviator, race car driver and investor.

Rounding out the crew as mission specialists were the first two astronauts from Saudi Arabia to fly aboard a private spacecraft: Ali Alqarni, 31, a fighter pilot for the Royal Saudi Air Force; and Rayyanah Barnawi, 34, a biomedical scientist in the field of cancer stem cell research.

Barnawi wiped away tears as she finished her experiments and prepared to leave the space station.

“Every story comes to an end and this is just the beginning of a new era for our country and region,” she said Monday.

Barnawi is the first woman from the Arab world ever launched into orbit and the first Saudi woman to fly in space.

In August 2022, Sara Sabry became the first Arab woman and the first Egyptian to fly to space on a short suborbital ride conducted by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin astro-tourism company.

Alqarni and Barnawi’s ISS sojourn was also notable for its overlap with that of Sultan Alneyadi, an ISS Expedition-69 crew member from the United Arab Emirates, marking the first time three astronauts from the Arab world had boarded the spacecraft together. space station were.

The Axiom 2 mission, which launched May 21, was the latest in a series of space expeditions funded by private investment capital and wealthy passengers rather than taxpayers’ money as NASA seeks to limit commercial access to low-orbit space. expand earth.

Axiom, which sent its first four-person astronaut team to ISS in April 2022, has also signed a contract with the US Space Agency to build the first commercial addition to the orbiting lab.

California-based SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter and CEO of electric car maker Tesla, provided the Falcon 9 rocket and crew capsule that carried Axiom’s team to and from space and controlled the flight.

NASA set up the launch site at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, and assumed responsibility for the Axiom crew during their time aboard the space station, which orbited some 400 km (250 mi) above Earth .

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