There are currently 11 crew members living on board the ISS, including the first Saudi female astronaut
Those who closely followed Sultan AlNeyadi’s spacewalk on Friday were also treated to a vicarious space adventure as they saw stunning shots of orbital sunrises and sunsets taken from the spacewalking astronauts’ Helca (helmet camera).
The International Space Station (ISS) orbits the Earth once every 90 minutes, and AlNeyadi and Bowen were able to experience a sunrise and a sunset every 45 minutes during their almost seven-hour spacewalk.
The public saw how astronauts worked in sunlight for 45 minutes, and in stark darkness with lights coming only from their helmets. The temperatures also varied from freezing cold minus 121ºC to extreme heat at 121ºC in the sunlight — which was almost three times the temperature during summer in the UAE. They saw how astronauts were protected by spacesuits that were designed like a miniature spaceship (shaped in human body).
AlNeyadi, together with Hazzaa AlMansoori, trained at Nasa's Johnson Space Centre’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL) in Houston for months to get familiar with microgravity and execute this historic spacewalk — the first for the Arab world.
Take a look at some of the stunning shots in the sky:
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There are currently 11 crew members living on board the ISS, including the first Saudi female astronaut
Nasa shares pictures showing the site of the HAKUTO-R Mission craft's hard landing on the lunar surface
Sultan AlNeyadi was seen taking photographs of the incoming crew and giving them a grand tour of the orbital outpost
Rayyanah Barnawi became the first Arab female astronaut in space; she is accompanied by fellow astronaut Ali Alqarni
In a quirk of timing, Rayyanah Barnawi, Ali Al Qarni will be greeted at the International Space Station by UAE astronaut Sultan AlNeyadi
They will be joining Emirati astronaut Sultan AlNeyadi on their mission
The mission is not kingdom's first foray into space, Prince Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, took part in a US-organised voyage in 1985
The honey in the clip came all the way from Al Khawaneej in Dubai, and was shipped to the space laboratory orbiting the Earth at an altitude of 400km