Timesof24
Sultan Al Neyadi (L), and Andrey Fedyaev, take part in a information convention. (File)
Houston:
Emirati astronaut Sultan al-Neyadi mentioned Wednesday that he won’t be required to quick throughout Ramadan whereas on his upcoming house mission.
The 41-year-old will develop into the primary Arab astronaut to spend six months in house when he blasts off for the Worldwide Area Station (ISS) subsequent month aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
Mr Neyadi, NASA’s Stephen Bowen and Warren Hoburg and Russia’s Andrey Fedyaev are scheduled to fly to the ISS on February 26 as members of SpaceX Dragon Crew-6.
Requested at a press convention Wednesday how he’ll observe the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims sometimes quick from daybreak to sundown, Mr Neyadi mentioned his state of affairs falls beneath an exception.
“I am in… the definition of a traveler, and we are able to truly break quick,” Mr Neyadi mentioned. “It is not obligatory.”
“Truly fasting shouldn’t be obligatory in the event you’re… feeling not effectively,” he mentioned.
“So in that regard, something that may jeopardize the mission, or perhaps put the crew members in a danger, we’re truly allowed to eat ample meals.”
Mr Neyadi would be the second nationwide from the oil-rich United Arab Emirates to voyage to house.
In September 2019, Hazzaa al-Mansoori spent eight days on the ISS.
The NASA astronauts and Russian cosmonaut had been additionally requested on the Johnson Area heart Wednesday whether or not any of the political tensions on Earth, over Ukraine for instance, spilled over into house.
“I have been working and coaching with cosmonauts for over 20 years now and it is at all times been superb,” mentioned NASA’s Bowen, a veteran of three house shuttle missions.
“When you get to house, it is only one crew, one automobile and all of us have the identical purpose.”
Fedyaev pointed to the “very lengthy historical past” of house cooperation between Russia and the USA.
“The life of individuals in house on the Worldwide Area Station is absolutely setting an excellent instance for a way folks ought to be residing on Earth,” the Russian cosmonaut mentioned.
5-day handover
NASA officers mentioned they count on the members of SpaceX Dragon Crew-6 to have a five-day handover with the 4 members of Dragon Crew-5, who’ve been on the ISS since October.
Additionally at the moment aboard the ISS are three astronauts whose return automobile, a Soyuz crew capsule, was broken by a strike from a tiny meteoroid in December.
Russia plans to ship an empty spacecraft to the ISS on February 20 to convey house the trio — Russian cosmonauts Dmitry Petelin and Sergei Prokopyev and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio.
Their Soyuz MS-22 crew capsule sprang a radiator coolant leak after the meteoroid strike.
MS-22 flew Petelin, Prokopyev and Rubio to the ISS in September after taking off from the Russian-operated Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
They had been scheduled to return house in the identical spacecraft in March, however their keep on the ISS will now be prolonged by a number of further months.
Russia has been utilizing the growing older however dependable Soyuz capsules to ferry astronauts into house for the reason that 1960s.
Area has remained a uncommon venue of cooperation between Moscow and Washington for the reason that begin of the Russian offensive in Ukraine.
The ISS was launched in 1998 at a time of elevated US-Russia cooperation following the Chilly Battle “Area Race.”
(Aside from the headline, this story has not been edited by Timesof24 employees and is revealed from a syndicated feed.)
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