UAE astronaut Sultan AlNeyadi to go on another space mission today

UAE astronaut Sultan AlNeyadi will be wearing his SpaceX suit again today for the Dragon Endeavour relocation mission outside the orbiting International Space Station (ISS).

AlNeyadi and his Crew-6 mates (Nasa astronauts Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev) will undock from the space-facing port of the ISS’s Harmony module at 3.10pm (UAE time) and dock again at the station’s forward Harmony port at 3.53pm, according to the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC).

The quartet will be supported by the Mission Control Centre at the Nasa Johnson Space Center in Houston and SpaceX in Hawthorne, California.

This will be the third port relocation of the Dragon crew spacecraft, following previous relocations during the Crew-1 and Crew-2 missions.

The relocation on Saturday will free up Harmony’s space-facing port for the docking of the next Dragon cargo spacecraft set in June. The zenith port on Harmony, meanwhile, will allow the Canadarm2 robotic arm easier access to the ISS Roll-Out Solar Arrays or IROSAs that will arrive on SpaceX’s 28th commercial resupply mission.

Last week, AlNeyadi made history when he completed the first spacewalk for an Arab astronaut outside the ISS.

On the eve of the relocation mission, AlNeyadi tweeted photo of him with his colleagues. He said: “Exciting times ahead… Tomorrow, we will be moving the spacecraft to another location on the ISS. Looking forward to executing the mission successfully.

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• UAE