MORE PIE IN THE SKY

In a first, the UAE sent its najmonaut’ on a long-haul space mission. Now, it is eyeing to send more

- MINTU P. JACOB

ON MARCH 7, Sultan Al Neyadi was busy harvesting tomatoes. Only that he is not at some organic farm in Dubai or in his vegetable garden. The Emirati is at the International Space Station (ISS). He is the first Arab to travel to space on a longhaul mission. He is not the first Arab space traveller though—Prince Sultan bin Salman Al Saud, a former Royal Saudi Air Force pilot, is said to be the first Arab and Muslim in space. He flew as a payload specialist on a seven-day international mission in June 1985. In 1987, Syrian air force officer Muhammed Faris flew to the Mir orbital space station as a research cosmonaut. In 2019, Hazza Al Mansouri, a fighter pilot of the United Arab Emirates, embarked on a seven-day mission—the UAE’s first—to the ISS.

The Arabs are taking great pride in their fourth ‘najmonaut’ (‘najma’in Arabic means star). Al Neyadi will spend six months at the ISS. He is part of the four-member SpaceX Crew-6, which arrived at the ISS on March 2 in the Crew Dragon Endeavour vehicle. The initial launch was rescheduled from February 27 owing to a technical glitch. The Crew-6 members include Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg of NASA and Andrey Fedyaev of Roscosmos. With them, the ISS now has 11 residents, seven of whom had arrived earlier in two separate crews.