How astronaut Sultan AlNeyadi will address UAE classrooms from space

By now, UAE astronaut Sultan AlNeyadi would have settled in at his new home over 400km above Earth: The International Space Station (ISS). The last official update about AlNeyadi and his Crew-6 mates was posted by Nasa, which said that the new arrivals would undergo a safety briefing and orientation aboard the orbital outpost, after which they would catch some sleep.

Among the first public engagements for Crew-6 is an in-flight event with AlNeyadi. This is scheduled to happen at 4.50pm (UAE time) on March 7, according to the Nasa website.

In 2019, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, had interacted with astronaut Hazza AlMansoori on his second day on the ISS. AlMansoori was the first Emirati astronaut to have gone to the space station, where he spent eight days.

During the Earth-to-space conversation, Sheikh Mohammed had assured AlMansoori that even though the latter is the first Emirati to venture to space, “a generation of young citizens will follow in your footsteps and become space scientists and technology pioneers”.

AlNeyadi’s six-month stay on the ISS — the longest Arab space mission in history — is a fulfilment of that assurance.

Weekly interactions with students

A mission specialist when he blasted off from Earth, AlNeyadi became a flight engineer upon boarding the station. Crew-6 is part of Expedition 68/69 to the ISS. An 'expedition' refers to the crew that is occupying the space station and using it for research and testing. They are sequentially numbered, starting from one and increasing with each subsequent expedition.

Along with Nasa astronauts Stephen Bowen and Warren Hoburg and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, AlNeyadi will carry out scientific research to prepare for human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit.

During the six months that AlNeyadi will be spending on the ISS, two Dubai entities will produce a weekly broadcast with interviews, engaging facts, competitions, activities, and opportunities for all students in the UAE to ask the astronaut questions. The Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) aims to reach 20,000 students and children through the initiative, “which is set to become a landmark in interactive education, bringing the groundbreaking and exciting work of the UAE's space mission to life”.

The MBRSC has partnered with the Emirates Literature Foundation to launch the educational initiative called Elf in Space. There will be 13 live calls and 10 ham radio interactions throughout the six months.

Experiments aboard ISS

AlNeyadi will collaborate with 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 conduct 19 scientific studies on cardiovascular and immune system health, back pain, technical demonstrations, epigenetics, fluid science, plant biology, material science, sleep analysis, and radiation.

• UAE astronaut’s life at ISS: How first 24 hours went for Sultan AlNeyadi in his new home