CAPE FLORIDA’S CANAVERAL (AP) — On Thursday, SpaceX sent four astronauts for NASA to the International Space Station, including the first Arab to travel there for a prolonged, month-long visit.
Just after midnight, the Falcon rocket blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center, lighting up the night sky as it traveled along the East Coast.
Sultan al-Neyadi, the second Emirati to travel to space, was launched into space in front of close to 80 United Arab Emirates spectators who had gathered at the launch site.
Schools and workplaces in the UAE streamed the launch live from Dubai and other locations.
Along with NASA’s Stephen Bowen, a retired Navy submariner who flew on three space shuttle missions, Warren “Woody” Hoburg, a former research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a space novice, and Andrei Fedyaev, a space novice who retired from the Russian Air Force, will also be aboard the Dragon capsule when it arrives at the space station on Friday.
SpaceX Launch Control radioed, “Welcome to space,” adding that liftoff came exactly four years to the day after the capsule’s initial orbital test flight. “Please remember to give us five stars if you had a good time on the ride.”
NASA’s space operations mission chief, Kathy Lueders, said Thursday’s launch enhanced a night sky already showcasing a conjunction of Venus and Jupiter. The two planets have appeared side by side all week, seeming to grow ever closer.
“We added a bright new star to that night sky tonight,” she told reporters.
The space station newcomers will replace a U.S.-Russian-Japanese crew that has been up there since October. The other station residents are two Russians and an American whose six-month stay was doubled, until September, after their Soyuz capsule sprang a leak. A replacement Soyuz arrived last weekend.
