First Arab woman to graduate NASA training shoots for the Moon

HOUSTON

Like her ancestors before her, Emirati astronaut Nora AlMatrooshi has spent much of her life gazing up at the stars and dreaming of flying to the Moon.

This week, she became the first Arab woman to graduate from NASA's training program, ready to blast off into the cosmos.

AlMatrooshi, 30, a mechanical engineer by training who has worked in the oil industry, was one of two astronaut candidates chosen by the United Arab Emirates Space Agency (UAESA) in 2021 to enroll in a training program with US space agency NASA.

Now, after two years of hard work, including practice spacewalks, AlMatrooshi, her fellow Emirati Mohammad AlMulla and 10 others in their training class are fully qualified astronauts.

The group, known as "The Flies," are now eligible for NASA missions to the International Space Station (ISS), Artemis launches to the Moon and, if all goes well, to even fly to Mars.

The UAESA announced earlier this year plans to build the airlock - a specialized doorway - for Gateway, the space station in development to someday orbit the Moon.

"I want to push humanity further than it's ever been before. I want humanity to go back to the Moon, and I want humanity to go further beyond the Moon," AlMatrooshi said.

Though AlMatrooshi is the first to graduate from NASA, other Arab women have already participated in private space missions, including Saudi biomedical researcher Rayyanah Barnawi, who flew with Axiom Space to the ISS last year, and Egyptian-Lebanese engineer Sara Sabry, one of the crew on a 2022 Blue Origin suborbital flight.

AlMatrooshi, who wears a hijab, explained that NASA developed a strategy to allow her to keep her hair covered while donning the agency's iconic white space suit and helmet, known officially as the Extravehicular Mobility Unit, or EMU.

The challenge comes in the moment after AlMatrooshi takes off her regular hijab but before she puts on the communications cap. To complicate matters further, only specifically authorized materials can be worn inside the EMU.

"The suit engineers ended up sewing a makeshift hijab for me, to where I could put it on, get into the suit, and then put on the comm cap, and then take it off and my hair would be covered. So I really, really appreciate them doing that for me," AlMatrooshi said.