A SpaceX capsule carrying two Saudi Arabian astronauts arrived at the International Space Station for the first time on Monday local time as part of a private mission by US private space agency Axiom Space.
Raynah Barnabi, the first Saudi woman in space, is a scientist and her companion, Ali Al-Qarni, is a trained fighter pilot. These two were the first to cross orbit for their country.
Barnaby hailed from space, saying, ‘I’m here not only representing myself, but the hopes and dreams of everyone in this part of the country.’
‘We’re really happy to be here,’ said mission commander Peggy Whitson. Whitson is a former NASA astronaut who has traveled to space three times in the past.
“It was a great mission, a great ride,” he said. We’ve had a lot of fun on the way up and we’re really happy to get a lot of work done here.’
The four astronauts entered the ISS two hours after docking with the space station, where they joined seven other astronauts. Three of them are Russian, three American and one Emirati. They were already on the space station.
The SpaceX rocket took off from Florida on Sunday. It takes about 16 hours to orbit the Earth and reach the space station at an altitude of 250 miles (400 kilometers) above the Earth’s surface.
