Rayyanah Barnawi, a breast cancer researcher, is sponsored by Saudi Arabia and is the first Arab woman to go to space.
A private rocket carrying the first Arab female astronaut has taken off for a mission to the International Space Station (ISS).
Rayyanah Barnawi, a breast cancer researcher from Saudi Arabia, was joined on Sunday’s mission by fellow Saudi Ali al-Qarni, a fighter pilot.
The pair are the first Saudi astronauts in decades to travel into space.
They took off aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral in the southern United States at 5:37 p.m. local time (21:37 GMT).
The team also includes Peggy Whitson, a former NASA astronaut who will make her fourth flight to the ISS, and John Shoffner, a Tennessee businessman who serves as the pilot.
The four should reach the space station in their capsule on Monday morning and will spend just over a week there before returning home with a splash off the coast of the southern US state of Florida.
“Hello from space! It feels great to view Earth from this capsule,” Barnawi said after settling into orbit.
Sponsored by the Saudi government, Barnawi had previously said it was “a great pleasure and a great honor” to be the first Saudi female astronaut to travel into space.
Aside from excitement about the research she will conduct on board, she said she looks forward to sharing her experiences with children while they are aboard the ISS. “It’s very exciting to be able to see their faces when they see astronauts from their own region for the first time,” she said.
Al-Qarni, a career fighter pilot, said he has “always had a passion for exploring the unknown and just admiring the sky and the stars”.
“It’s a great opportunity for me to pursue this kind of passion that I have and now maybe just fly among the stars,” he said.
The pair are the first from their country to ride a rocket since a Saudi prince traveled aboard the space shuttle Discovery in 1985. In a quirk of timing, they are greeted at the station by an astronaut from the United Arab Emirates.
The mission is the second private flight to the space station to be hosted by Houston-based Axiom Space.
The first was last year by three businessmen, with another retired NASA astronaut. The company plans to add its own rooms to the station in a few years, eventually removing them to form a self-contained outpost available for rent.
Axiom would not say how much Saudi Arabia and Shoffner, the Tennessee businessman, will pay for the planned 10-day mission. The company had previously quoted a ticket price of $55 million each.
After shunning space tourism for decades, NASA is now embracing it with two scheduled private missions per year. The Russian space agency has been doing it intermittently for decades.
“Our job is to expand what we’re doing in low Earth orbit around the world,” said NASA’s space station program manager Joel Montalbano.
SpaceX’s first stage booster touched down back at Cape Canaveral eight minutes after liftoff — a special treat for the launch-day crowd, which included about 60 Saudis.
“It was a very, very exciting day,” said Axiom’s Matt Ondler.