Emirati astronaut talks with UAE leaders from ISS

Agencies | Dubai                                         

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com   

Emirati astronaut Sultan Al Neyadi yesterday gave a live address from the International Space Station (ISS) to the UAE leaders including Shaikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Vice President of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, as well as fellow compatriots back on earth, describing his initial days aboard the space station.

Al Neyadi, the UAE’s second man to travel into space after Hazza Al Mansouri’s eight-day sojourn on the ISS in 2019, said the newly arrived crew was coping well with microgravity in the space station and their schedules were crowded since they arrived.

“There are many experiments that the UAE will take part in,” he said. “We also have a number of experiments from the UAE, to be conducted by the UAE, which will hold the UAE fingerprint. We are also subjects in these experiments: astronauts in microgravity.”

The 41-year-old arrived on the ISS last Friday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, whose launch was earlier scuttled after technical issues, and will spend six months there to take part in more than 200 experiments being conducted by Nasa and 19 others involving UAE universities.