UAE astronaut says not required to quick throughout Ramadan on ISS
Emirati astronaut Sultan al-Neyadi mentioned Wednesday that he is not going to be required to quick throughout Ramadan whereas on his upcoming area mission.
The 41-year-old will change into the primary Arab astronaut to spend six months in area when he blasts off for the Worldwide House Station (ISS) subsequent month aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
Neyadi, NASA’s Stephen Bowen and Warren Hoburg and Russia’s Andrey Fedyaev are scheduled to fly to the ISS on February 26 as members of SpaceX Dragon Crew-6.
Requested at a press convention Wednesday how he’ll observe the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims usually quick from daybreak to sundown, Neyadi mentioned his state of affairs falls beneath an exception.
“I am in… the definition of a traveler, and we are able to truly break quick,” Neyadi mentioned. “It is not obligatory.”
“Truly fasting shouldn’t be obligatory should you’re… feeling not properly,” he mentioned.
“So in that regard, something that may jeopardize the mission, or perhaps put the crew members in a danger, we’re truly allowed to eat adequate meals.”
Neyadi would be the second nationwide from the oil-rich United Arab Emirates to voyage to area.
In September 2019, Hazzaa al-Mansoori spent eight days on the ISS.
The NASA astronauts and Russian cosmonaut had been additionally requested on the Johnson House heart Wednesday whether or not any of the political tensions on Earth, over Ukraine for instance, spilled over into area.
“I have been working and coaching with cosmonauts for over 20 years now and it is all the time been wonderful,” mentioned NASA’s Bowen, a veteran of three area shuttle missions.
“When you get to area, it is only one crew, one car and all of us have the identical purpose.”
Fedyaev pointed to the “very lengthy historical past” of area cooperation between Russia and the US.
“The life of individuals in area on the Worldwide House Station is absolutely setting an excellent instance for the way folks ought to be dwelling on Earth,” the Russian cosmonaut mentioned.
– 5-day handover –
NASA officers mentioned they count on the members of SpaceX Dragon Crew-6 to have a five-day handover with the 4 members of Dragon Crew-5, who’ve been on the ISS since October.
Additionally presently aboard the ISS are three astronauts whose return car, a Soyuz crew capsule, was broken by a strike from a tiny meteoroid in December.
Russia plans to ship an empty spacecraft to the ISS on February 20 to carry residence the trio — Russian cosmonauts Dmitry Petelin and Sergei Prokopyev and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio.
Their Soyuz MS-22 crew capsule sprang a radiator coolant leak after the meteoroid strike.
MS-22 flew Petelin, Prokopyev and Rubio to the ISS in September after taking off from the Russian-operated Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
They had been scheduled to return residence in the identical spacecraft in March, however their keep on the ISS will now be prolonged by a number of further months.
Russia has been utilizing the getting old however dependable Soyuz capsules to ferry astronauts into area for the reason that Sixties.
House has remained a uncommon venue of cooperation between Moscow and Washington for the reason that begin of the Russian offensive in Ukraine.
The ISS was launched in 1998 at a time of elevated US-Russia cooperation following the Chilly Warfare “House Race.”
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