The first two Saudi astronauts are to go to the orbiting laboratory in the second-ever private mission to the International Space Station (ISS) organized by Axiom Space, the mission is due to blast off from Florida on Sunday.
Rayyanah Barnawi, a breast cancer researcher, will become the first Saudi woman to voyage into space and will be joined on the mission by fellow Saudi Ali Al-Qarni, a fighter pilot.
The Axiom Mission 2 (Ax-2) crew will take off aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral in the southern state of Florida at 5:37 pm (2137 GMT).
The team also includes Peggy Whitson, a former NASA astronaut who will be making her fourth flight to the ISS, and John Shoffner, a businessman from Tennessee who will serve as pilot.
They are due to spend around 10 days on board the ISS, where they should arrive around 1:30 pm on Monday, according to the “Ahram Online” website.
Worth mentioned that the mission is not Saudi Arabia’s first foray into space.
In 1985, Prince Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, an air force pilot, took part in a US-organized space voyage.
But the space mission involving a Saudi woman is the latest move by the oil-rich Gulf kingdom, where women only gained the right to drive a few years ago, to revamp its ultraconservative image.
The kingdom established the Saudi Space Commission in 2018 and launched a program last year to send astronauts into space.
