'Takes my breath away': UAE astronaut Sultan AlNeyadi posts stunning photo of 'home' from space

Emirati astronaut Sultan AlNeyadi took a break from his busy work schedule aboard the International Space Station and tweeted a stunning photo of the UAE on Tuesday. He captioned the tweet: "The sight of our beautiful country takes my breath away every time."

The photo shows the planet's horizon taken 400km above Earth. AlNeyadi tweeted in Arabic: "No matter where I am in the world, my path always leads me home. And even from Space, the sight of our beautiful country takes my breath away every time."

AlNeyadi actually can see the UAE from space 16 times daily – with day time and night time views – because the orbiting laboratory can complete one orbit of Earth every 90 minutes or 16 orbits of Earth, equivalent to witnessing 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets in 24 hours.

In September 2019, Hazzaa AlMansoori, the first Emirati astronaut to go to the ISS for an eight-day space mission also tweeted photos of the UAE from space.

The ISS orbits Earth at a speed of five miles or 8km per second or 28,000 kilometres per hour. Launch on November 20, 1998, the ISS measures 357 feet or 108 metres from end-to-end, which is the same size as an American football field. It has a mass of nearly 1 million pounds. Its solar array wingspan (measuring 356 feet, 109 meters) is longer than the world’s largest passenger aircraft, the Airbus A380 (262 feet, 80 meters).

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