SpaceX sends Saudi astronauts, including first Arab woman, to the International Space Station (ISS).

A private rocket carrying the first Arab woman astronaut has blasted off on a mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

Rayyanah Barnawi, a breast cancer researcher from Saudi Arabia, was joined on Sunday’s mission by fellow Saudi Ali al-Qarni, a fighter pilot.

The pair are the first Saudi astronauts to voyage into space in decades.

They took off on board a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral in the southern United States at 5:37pm local time (21:37 GMT).

The team also includes Peggy Whitson, a former NASA astronaut who will be making her fourth flight to the ISS, and John Shoffner, a businessman from Tennessee who is serving as pilot.

The four should reach the space station in their capsule on Monday morning and will spend just over a week there before returning home with a splashdown off the coast of the southern US state of Florida.

Source: www.aljazeera.com

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