On Thursday, SpaceX sent four NASA astronauts to orbit, including the first person from the Arab world to embark on a multimonth mission to the International Space Station.
Just after midnight, the Falcon rocket blasted off from Kennedy Space Center, lighting up the East Coast sky.
The launch of Sultan al-Neyadi, the second Emirati astronaut, was seen by about eighty people from the United Arab Emirates.
Live broadcasts of the event were also shown in classrooms and workplaces in Dubai and elsewhere in the United Arab Emirates.
NASA astronauts Warren “Woody” Hoburg, a former research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Stephen Bowen, a retired Navy submariner who has flown three times on the space shuttle, as well as Andrei Fedyaev, a veteran of the Russian Air Force who is also a space newbie, will arrive at the International Space Station on Friday in the Dragon capsule.
SpaceX Launch Control radioed, “Welcome to orbit,” noting that the launch occurred exactly four years to the day after the first orbital test flight of the spacecraft. Please rate us five stars if you had a good time on the journey.
Its first launch on Monday was scrapped at the last minute due to a blocked filter in the engine ignition system.
As Bowen put it, “the trip was well worth it,” even if it did take two tries.
Kathy Lueders, the head of NASA’s space operations, said the launch on Thursday enhanced a night sky already displaying a conjunction of Venus and Jupiter. This week, the two planets have been in close proximity to one another.
