Private astronaut crew, including first Arab woman in orbit, departs for splashdown

The SpaceX Crew Dragon vessel carried the foursome to begin their 12-hour return flight from the ISS late Tuesday morning.

If all goes according to plan, the capsule will parachute into the Gulf of Mexico from Panama City, Florida, at about 11 p.m. EDT (0300 GMT on Wednesday) after a fiery re-entry through Earth’s atmosphere.

The return flight concludes the second space station mission organized, equipped and trained entirely at private expense by Axiom Space, a 7-year-old Houston-based company headed by NASA’s former ISS program manager.

The Axiom 2 crew was led by 63-year-old retired NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, who holds the US record for most time spent in space at 665 days during three long-duration missions to the ISS, including 10 spacewalks. are also included.

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 aboard a private spacecraft – 31-year-old Ali Alkarni, a fighter pilot for the Royal Saudi Air Force, and Raynah Barnawi, 34, a cancer stem A biomedical scientist in -cell research.

Barnawi Arab is the first woman in the 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 kingdom gained the right to drive in June 2018 .

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 Alnedi, 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, is the latest in a series of space missions funded by wealthy travelers rather than private investment capital and taxpayer dollars as NASA seeks to expand commercial access to low-Earth orbit.

Axiom has also contracted with the US space agency to build the first commercial 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 axerophthol crew’s stay on the space station orbiting approximately 250 miles (400 km) above Earth.

Updated: May 31, 2023, 03:59 AM IST