The First Emirati Astronaut to Join a Six-Month Mission to the ISS

The name of the first Arab astronaut to engage in a long-term space mission to the International Space Station (ISS) in spring 2023 has been revealed.

Sultan Al Neyadi has been chosen by the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) as the astronaut. He will join the ISS mission as part of an agreement between NASA and Axiom Space, a private aerospace company specialising in spaceflight and space infrastructure development. The launch is scheduled for the first half of 2023.

The six-month mission of Sultan Al Neyadi will consist of scientific experiments as part of the UAE's astronaut programme, which aims to educate and train a team of Emirati astronauts and send them into space to perform various scientific missions.

This will be the UAE's second mission to the ISS and the Arab world's first long-term space mission. In 2019 Hazza Al-Mansouri spent eight days on the ISS, when he launched into space aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome.