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Journalism of Courage
UAE astronaut Sultan Alneyadi, NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev splashed down in the SpaceX Dragon Endeavour spacecraft off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida on Monday after more than six months in space.
SpaceX shared a video of the Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft undocking from the International Space Station on YouTube. NASA, meanwhile, shared a video of the spacecraft splashing down off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida. You can view them both below.
During the mission, Al Neyadi became both the first Emirati astronaut to go on a long-term space mission and also the first Emirati astronaut to go on a spacewalk.
But Al Neyadi is not the first Emirati to go aboard the International Space Station: that honour goes to Hazza Al Mansoori, who lived on the space station for eight days in 2019. Al Neyadi embarked on the mission as part of the agreement signed between Texas-based Axiom Space and the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre.
Axiom Space was able to provide this opportunity to Al Neyadi as part of an agreement with NASA. NASA provided Axiom with a seat owned by the space agency on SpaceX’s upcoming Crew-6 mission in exchange for a seat on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft that Axiom provided to NASA. That seat was used by American astronaut Mark Vande Hei, who returned to Earth after spending 355 days on the International Space Station. Since the seats were determined to be of equal value, Axiom said it wouldn’t be exchanging any funds with NASA.
