A non-public flight sporting two Saudi astronauts and different guests has arrived on the International Space Station
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, with the Dragon tablet and a staff of 4 personal astronauts, lifts off from Pad 39A on the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Sunday, May 21, 2023. (AP Photo/John Raoux)
The Associated Press
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The International Space Station rolled out the welcome mat Monday for 2 Saudi guests, including the kingdom’s first female astronaut.
SpaceX’s chartered flight arrived on the orbiting lab lower than 16 hours after blasting off from Florida. The 4 visitors will spend simply over per week there, earlier than returning to Earth of their tablet.
The 270-mile-high (430-kilometer-high) docking places the gap station inhabitants at 11, representing no longer handiest Saudi Arabia and the U.S., however the United Arab Emirates and Russia. .
Saudi Arabia’s govt is choosing up the multimillion-dollar tab for its first female astronaut, Rayyanah Barnawi, a stem mobile researcher, and fighter pilot Ali al-Qarni.
John Shoffner, a Knoxville, Tennessee, businessman who began a automobile racing group, is paying his personal method. Retired NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson is their chaperone. She now works for Axiom Space, the Houston corporate that arranged the 10-day travel, its 2nd to the gap station.
The corporate cited price tag costs of $55 million every for closing 12 months’s personal travel via 3 businessmen, however may not say how a lot the most recent seats price.
Only one different Saudi has flown earlier than in area, a prince who rode on NASA’s commute Discovery in 1985.
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