After sharing a selfie from space, UAE astronaut Sultan Al Neyadi has now shared the first image of the UAE from the space station. Al Neyadi took to Twitter to share the image, along with a beautiful caption which read:
“No matter where I am in the world, my path always leads me home. And even from Space, the site of our beautiful country takes my breath away every time.”
Al Neyadi reached the science laboratoy on March 3 for a six-month mission. The image, taken about 420km above Earth, shows striking views of the Emirates and the Arabian Gulf.
This is UAE’s second mission to space. Following his colleague Hazza Al Mansouri’s eight-day trip to the ISS in 2019, Dr Al Neyadi is the second Emirati to set out on a mission to space.
Earlier, Al Neyadi shared his first selfie from space. Clad in a blue t-shirt, Al Neyadi clicked a selfie against the background of the cupola on the ISS. Cupola is a small observatory dome-like module designed for the observation of operations outside the station such as robotic activities, the approach of vehicles, and spacewalks.
Prior to his launch to ISS, Al Neyadi had said he would take photos of the Earth passing through the cupola.
“All astronauts run towards the Cupola to watch Earth or see Earth from there. I want to do it differently. I want to go there with a camera, hopefully. So I want to share that moment with everybody. I want to capture that moment of looking back, back towards Earth with everybody. Yeah, so that’s probably the moment I’m looking forward to,” he said in a NASA podcast.
Throughout the mission, Sultan will partner with various space agencies, including NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), and the National Centre for Space Studies (CNES), to carry out 19 scientific studies across a broad spectrum of fields. These studies will cover topics such as cardiovascular and immune system health, back pain, technical demonstrations, epigenetics, fluid science, plant biology, material science, sleep analysis, and radiation.
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