ALBAWABA - A team of four astronauts, including the first-ever Arab woman to reach orbit, safely returned to Earth after an eight-day research mission aboard the International Space Station.
The spacecraft, "Crew Dragon" by SpaceX, carrying the four astronauts, landed in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Panama City, Florida, in the early hours of Wednesday after a 12-hour journey.
The mission marked the second flight for the space station organized, equipped, and trained by "Axiom Space," a company based in Houston, led by Michael Suffredini, the former program manager for the International Space Station at NASA. The crew of "Axiom 2" was led by retired NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson (63 years old), who holds the record for the most time spent by an American in space, with a total of 665 days during three long-duration missions to the International Space Station, including ten spacewalks. Whitson currently serves as the Director of Manned Spaceflight at Axiom Space.
Whitson stated to mission observers after landing, "It was an exceptional journey, and we thoroughly enjoyed it."
The second American crew member is John Shoffner (67 years old), a pilot, race car driver, and investor from Alaska.
As for the two Saudis, Ali Al-Qarni (31 years old) is a fighter pilot in the Royal Saudi Air Force, and Ranya Barnawi (34 years old) is a biomedical researcher in the field of cancer stem cell research. They are the first-ever Saudi astronauts to ascend to space aboard a private vehicle.
Barnawi is also the first Arab woman to embark on a journey to Earth's orbit and the first Saudi woman to reach space, achieving this milestone just five years after women in the Kingdom were granted the right to drive in June 2018.
In August 2022, Sara Sabry became the first Arab woman and the first Egyptian to fly to space on a suborbital flight sent by Blue Origin, the space tourism company owned by Jeff Bezos. The presence of Al-Qarni and Barnawi at the International Space Station coincided with Sultan Al-Niyadi, a member of "Mission 69," marking the first time three Arab astronauts have visited the station together.
The "Axiom 2" mission, which launched on May 21, is the latest in a series of spaceflights funded by private capital and wealthy passengers rather than taxpayer funds, as NASA seeks to expand commercial access to low Earth orbit.
SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter and CEO of Tesla, the electric vehicle manufacturing company, supplied the mission with the "Falcon 9" rocket and crew capsule that transported the "Axiom 2" team to and from orbit.
NASA provided the launch site at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, and was responsible for the "Axiom 2" crew's stay aboard the International Space Station, which orbits at an altitude of 400 kilometers above Earth.
