An astronaut team of two Americans and two Saudis landed safely in Florida.
An entirely private astronaut team of two Americans and two Saudis, including the first Arab woman sent into orbit, lifted off safely from Florida on Tuesday night to complete an eight-day research mission on the International Space Station (ISS). separated from
The SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule parachuted them into the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Panama City, Florida, after a 12-hour return flight and re-entry through Earth’s atmosphere.
The splashdown was carried live by a joint webcast presented by SpaceX and Axiom Space, the company behind the mission.
It concluded the second space station mission organized, equipped and trained entirely at private expense by Axiom, a 7-year-old Houston-based venture headed by NASA’s former ISS program manager.
The Axiom 2 crew was led by Peggy Whitson, a 63-year-old retired NASA astronaut who holds the US record for most time spent in space with 665 days in three long-duration missions to the ISS, including 10 spacewalks. She now serves as the director of human spaceflight of Axiom.
“That was a phenomenal ride. We really enjoyed it,” Ms Whitson radioed mission controllers moments after splashdown.
The designated pilot of the Ax-2 was John Shoffner, 67, an aviator, race car driver, and investor from Alaska.
Rounding out the crew as mission specialists were Saudi Arabia’s first two astronauts to have flown on a private spacecraft – Ali Alkarni, 31, a fighter pilot for the Royal Saudi Air Force; and Raynah Barnawi, 34, a biomedical scientist in cancer stem cell research.
Ms Barnawi is the first woman in the Arab world to be launched into Earth orbit and the first Saudi woman to fly in space, a feat that comes barely five years after women in the Gulf country gained the right to drive in June 2018 Is.
In August 2022, Sara Sabri became the first Arab woman and the first Egyptian woman in space on a brief suborbital ride operated by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin astro-tourist venture.
Alkarni and Barnawi’s ISS stay was also notable for overlapping with Sultan Alneyadi, an ISS Expedition-69 crew member from the United Arab Emirates, the first time three astronauts from the Arab world were aboard the space station together.
The Axiom 2 mission, which launched May 21, was the latest in a series of space missions controlled by wealthy travelers rather than private investment capital and taxpayer dollars, as NASA seeks to expand commercial access to low-Earth orbit. wants to
Axiom, which sent its first four-member astronaut crew to the ISS in April 2022, has also signed a contract with the US space agency to build the first commercial facility for the orbiting laboratory.
California-based SpaceX, which was founded by Twitter owner and Tesla Inc electric carmaker CEO Elon Musk, supplied the Falcon 9 rocket and crew capsule that powered the Axiom’s crew and flight to and from orbit.
NASA equipped the launch site at its Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, and assumed responsibility for the Axiom crew during their stay on the space station, orbiting approximately 250 miles (400 km) above Earth.
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