DUBAI: As Instagram posts go, it's hard to beat. But for Hazza Al-Mansoori, the first Emirati astronaut, posting spectacular images to his social media accounts from space is all in a day’s work.
The 35-year-old has delighted his country by posting satellite images of the UAE from the International Space Station (ISS).
“From the happiest astronaut to the happiest nation...this is history, this is the UAE from space," Al-Mansoori tweeted from space.
The tweeted image showed the Arabian peninsula, and the UAE in particular, from the ISS, where Al-Mansoori docked last week.
The Emirati astronaut was part of a three-person team that boarded the Soyuz MS-15, and blasted off from Kazakhistan and was monitored by the Russian Federal Space Agency (on Sept. 25’
The crew included Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka and NASA astronaut Jessica Meir.
Al-Mansoori also retweeted from the official Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre account, with highlights of him carrying out an experiment to study “time perception in microgravity.”
But Al-Mansoori has also had time for some lighter moments amid the serious science. He posted images of the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre’s mascot, Suhail, floating inside the space station.
Another image shows Al-Mansoori wearing his UAE national dress alongside his colleagues, who are all wearing T-shirts representing their respective countries’ space agencies.
Al-Mansoori is expected to return to earth onThursday, having spent eight days inside the ISS.
Al-Mansoori’s voyage makes him the third Arab to venture into space.
In 1985, Saudi Arabia's Prince Sultan bin Salman, originally a civilian pilot, traveled into space at the age of 28 and Syria's Mohammed Faris in 1987, spent time aboard the Mir space station.
