Dubai, April 29, 2022 (AFP) – The United Arab Emirates announced on Friday (29) the sending of an astronaut into space for a six-month mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS). , “a new stage” in the space ambitions of the wealthy Gulf country.
This “new stage” was inaugurated “with the signing of a new agreement to send the first Arab astronaut on a long 180-day mission to the ISS”, tweeted UAE Vice President and Dubai leader Sheikh Mohamed bin Rashed al Makum. .
According to the Emirati daily The National, the agreement was signed on Wednesday (27), between the Mohammed bin Space Center (MBRSC) and Axiom Space, at the Emirate embassy in Washington.
The astronaut will be part of the SpaceX Crew-6 mission, whose launch is scheduled for 2023, added the same source.
The United Arab Emirates sent the first Emirati into space in September 2019, on an eight-day mission aboard a Soyuz rocket. The aircraft took off from the Russian cosmodrome in Baikonur, Kazakhstan.
In July of the same year, the oil-rich country had already launched, from the Japanese space center in Tanegashima, an unmanned spacecraft with the probe “Hope” (“Hope”) to be placed in the orbit of Mars, as part of the first interplanetary mission of the Arab world.
dm / saa / bfi / me / eg / dd / tt
