UAE astronauts in line for spacewalks after completing first year of training at Nasa – The National

UAE astronauts in line for spacewalks after completing first year of training at Nasa – The National

The UAE’s first two astronauts have completed their first year of training at Nasa, making them eligible to perform spacewalks in future missions.

Hazza Al Mansouri, the first Emirati to go to space, and Sultan Al Neyadi, who was reserve astronaut for that landmark journey on the International Space Station, have been training at Nasa’s Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas, since late last year.

The first part of their 30-month training involved learning how to perform spacewalks outside the International Space Station (ISS) to carry out maintenance work on the structure — an essential part of an astronaut’s duty on the floating laboratory.