Saudi Arabia will send its first female astronaut on a space mission this year, in another effort to shake up the kingdom’s ultra-conservative image.
This was reported by France 24, Ukrinform reports.
As mentioned, Rayyana Barnawi will join her compatriot Ali Al-Qarni on a 10-day mission to the International Space Station (ISS). They will fly to the ISS in the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft as part of a mission from private space company Axiom Space this spring.

Photo: Twitter/saudispace
Also on the Ax-2 will be former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, who will make her fourth flight to the ISS, and Tennessee businessman John Shoffner, who will serve as a pilot.
The Ax-2 crew will launch to the ISS on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the eponymous NASA Space Center’s 39A launch complex. Kennedy in Florida.
According to the publication, Saudi Arabia will follow in the footsteps of neighboring United Arab Emirates, which became the first Arab country to send a citizen into space in 2019. Astronaut Hazzaa al-Mansoori spent eight days on the ISS.
Another Emirati astronaut, Sultan al-Neyadi, will also travel to the space station later this month. When he travels to the ISS on a Falcon 9 rocket, he will become the first Arab astronaut to spend six months in space.
In 2018, Saudi Arabia launched a space program and launched another last year to send astronauts into space.
The current government of the country is trying to get rid of the harsh image of the kingdom with reforms. Since 2017, women have been allowed to drive and travel abroad without a male guardian, and their share of the workforce has more than doubled, from 17 percent to 37 percent.
As reported by Ukrinform, astronauts of the Shenzhou-15 manned spacecraft, currently aboard China’s Tiangong space station, completed their first spacewalk at 00:16 Beijing time on Friday.