KEY POINTS

  • Al Neyadi and his crew departed from Texas on Tuesday night to the Kennedy Space Center
  • They will spend the next five days in Florida before take off on Feb. 27
  • Al Neyadi is the first UAE astronaut to embark on a long-duration space mission

UAE astronaut Sultan Al Neyadi headed to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday night, ahead of his first long-haul Arab space mission next week.

Al Neyadi and his three crewmates will embark on the UAE's Mission 2 to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard a SpaceX spacecraft on Feb. 27.

The mission will take off from Launch Complex 39A at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) space center, where Al Neyadi and the three members of the Crew-6 Dragon crew will spend the next five days, Gulf News reported.

Before heading to Florida, the Emirati astronaut and his colleagues quarantined for two weeks at the Astronaut Quarantine Facility at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Texas, where they had also spent months training for the mission.

The Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center (MBRSC) in the UAE and NASA's Johnson Space Center took to Twitter on Tuesday to give live updates on Al Neyadi and his crew's departure from Texas and arrival in Florida.

"Bye #Crew6! Have a safe trip," Johnson Space Center tweeted.

"The crew departed Houston this morning after completing months of training with @NASA, @SpaceX, and international partners. They are currently on their way to @NASA_Kennedy, where their launch date is targeted for Feb. 26 at 2:07 a.m.," the space center added.

In a separate tweet, the MBRSC also shared a link to NASA's live coverage of the Crew-6's arrival at the Kennedy Space Center.

The upcoming mission is a historic one for the UAE, as Al Neyadi is the first astronaut to go on a six-month mission to the ISS. Several Emirati universities assigned 19 scientific experiments for him to perform during the mission. He will also carry out an outreach and education program during his time at the orbiting space laboratory, where he will get to interact with students in the UAE from space.

The mission was originally set for Feb. 26. Following a flight readiness review, however, NASA and SpaceX announced that the takeoff would be delayed by 24 hours, pushing back the launch of Crew-6's Dragon capsule Endeavor to Feb. 27.

Astronauts arrive before launch to the International Space Station, in Cape Canaveral
The mission will launch from Launch Complex 39A at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) space center. Reuters