by CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The first Saudi Arabian astronauts in decades flew to the International Space Station on Sunday on a multi-million dollar charter flight.
SpaceX launched the ticket holding team, led by a retired NASA astronaut who now works for the company that organized the trip. Also on board: an American businessman who now owns a sports car racing team.
The four should arrive at the space station in their capsule on Monday morning; they will spend just over a week there before returning home with a splashdown off the Florida coast.
Rayyanah Barnawi, a Saudi Arabian government-sponsored stem cell researcher, became the kingdom’s first woman to go into space. She was joined by Ali al-Qarni, a fighter pilot in the Royal Saudi Air Force.
They are the first from their country to travel in a rocket since a Saudi prince launched himself aboard the shuttle Discovery in 1985. At a whim of the weather, they will be greeted at the station by an astronaut from the United Arab Emirates.
“This is a dream come true for everyone,” Barnawi said before the flight. “Just being able to understand that this is possible. If Ali and I can do it, they can do it too.”
Rounding out the visiting team: John Shoffner of Knoxville, Tenn., a former driver and owner of a sports car racing team that competes in Europe, and Commander Peggy Whitson, the first female station commander to hold the U.S. record for longest cumulative time in space: 665 days and counting.
“It was a phenomenal trip,” Whitson said after reaching orbit. His crewmates cheered with joy.
It is the second private flight to the space station organized by Houston-based Axiom Space. The first was last year for three businessmen, with another retired NASA astronaut. The company plans to start adding its own rooms to the station in a few years, eventually removing them to form a free-standing outpost available for rent.
Axiom will not say how much Shoffner and Saudi Arabia are paying for the planned 10-day mission. The company had previously quoted a ticket price of $55 million each.
NASA’s most recent price list shows daily charges per person of $2,000 for food and up to $1,500 for sleeping bags and other equipment. Do you need to take your things to the space station in advance? Estimate about $10,000 per pound, the same fee for throwing it away afterwards. Do you need your items returned intact? Double the price.
At least the email and video links are free.
Guests will have access to most of the station as they conduct experiments, photograph the Earth and chat with schoolchildren back home, demonstrating how kites fly in space when attached to a fan.
After decades of avoiding space tourism, NASA now embraces it with two planned private missions a year. The Russian Space Agency has been doing it, off and on, for decades.
“Our job is to expand what we do in low Earth orbit around the world,” said NASA space station program manager Joel Montalbano.
SpaceX’s first stage propellant landed at Cape Canaveral eight minutes after liftoff, to be recycled for a future flight.
“It was a very, very exciting day,” especially seeing the booster return to the launch site, Axiom CTO Matt Ondler said. Now comes the rest of the mission, he noted, “all toward a path of what we believe to be the future of low-Earth orbit.”
