Saudi Arabia will send its first female astronaut on a space mission later this year, state media have reported, in the latest move to transform the kingdom’s ultra-conservative image.
Rayyana Barnawi will join Saudi male astronaut Ali Al-Qarni on a mission to the International Space Station (ISS) “during the second quarter of 2023”, the official Saudi Press Agency said on Sunday.
The astronauts “will join the crew of the AX-2 space mission” and the space flight will be “launched from the US”, the agency said.
The oil-rich country will follow in the footsteps of neighboring United Arab Emirates which in 2019 became the first Arab country to send one of its citizens into space.
‘Sultan of Space’
At that time, astronaut Hazzaa al-Mansoori spent eight days on the ISS. Another Emirati, Sultan al-Neyadi, will also travel this month.
Dubbed the “Sultan of Space”, Neyadi, 41, will become the first Arab astronaut to spend six months in space when he blasts off to the ISS on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
The Gulf Monarchy has been working to diversify its energy-dependent economy through a number of projects.
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Saudi de facto leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has also tried to shed the kingdom’s hardline image through a push for reform.
Since coming to power in 2017, women have been allowed to drive and travel abroad without a male guardian, and their proportion in the workforce has doubled since 2016, from 17 percent to 37 percent.
Not the first Saudi
However, the Saudi Arabian government’s foray into space is not the first.
In 1985, Saudi royal Prince Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, an air force pilot, participated in a US-organized space mission, becoming the first Arab Muslim to travel into space.
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In 2018, Saudi Arabia set up a space program and last year launched another to send astronauts into space, all part of Prince Salman’s Vision 2030 agenda for economic diversification.