KEY POINTS

  • Al Neyadi will be accompanied by two NASA astronauts
  • The Crew-6 Mission will last for six months
  • The mission was originally scheduled on Feb. 19

NASA has announced the date for UAE astronaut Sultan Al Neyadi's journey to the International Space Station (ISS).

Neyadi will head to space alongside NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Warren Hoburg, as well as Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrew Fedyaev, on Feb. 26.

"The Falcon 9 rocket and the Dragon Endeavour spacecraft is scheduled to launch no earlier than February 26 from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Centre in Florida," announced NASA.

"UPDATE: The launch date of the first Arab long-duration astronaut mission is scheduled no earlier than 26 February 2023. The 6-month mission, on board the International Space Station, will include different scientific experiments and research," tweeted Mohammed bin Rashid Space Center, the incubator of the UAE National Space Programme.

The Crew-6 mission will head to the ISS onboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft named Endeavour, attached to a Falcon 9 rocket. The mission was originally scheduled for Feb. 19, but had to be postponed to allow Russia to carry out a rescue mission after three astronauts had been stranded on the space station.

The mission, which marks Al Neyadi's first trip to space, will last for six months on the ISS. During the mission, Al Neyadi will conduct in-depth scientific experiments as part of the second mission of the UAE Astronaut Programme that will pave the way for future missions. He will represent the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Center, and will become a flight engineer for Expedition 69 once aboard the station.

The expedition also marks the UAE's second ISS mission, following a 2019 mission where Emirati astronaut Hazza Al Mansouri had spent eight days on the orbiting space laboratory. During his mission, the UAE teamed up with Russian space agency Roscosmos in flying Al Mansouri to the ISS aboard a Soyuz rocket.

For Al Neyadi's upcoming mission, the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Center has partnered with U.S.-based Axiom Space to arrange the trip to space.

NASA has scheduled a pair of news conferences on Jan. 25 at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. The news conferences will center around the SpaceX Crew 6 mission to the ISS, which is NASA'S sixth crew rotation flight with a U.S. commercial spacecraft.

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