April 10th, local time, the Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates, Mohamed bin Rashed Al Maktoum, tweeted that the United Arab Emirates has selected the world’s first female Arab astronaut, whose name is Nora Al Matrooshi.
According to a report by the Russian satellite news agency on April 11, the Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates said on the 10th, “Today we announced the selection of two UAE astronauts, one of whom is Nora Almattrushi, the first Arab female astronaut. Another astronaut is Mohammed Al Mulla.
Al Matrushi was born in 1993 and worked as an engineer at the Emirates National Petroleum Construction Company. The United Arab Emirates said that she was the world’s first Arab female astronaut, and if the future mission went well, she would also become the first Arab woman to fly into space. However, the title of the first Muslim woman to go into space was acquired by Anush Ansari, an Iranian-American, in 2006. She entered the International Space Station at her own expense on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, becoming the world’s first female space tourist.
The United Arab Emirates said that the two astronauts were selected from more than 4,000 applicants who would go to NASA to participate in the astronaut training program. Last October, NASA announced that eight countries, the United States, Australia, Canada, Japan, Luxembourg, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates, have jointly signed an international agreement called the Artemis Agreement, forming a national alliance dedicated to lunar exploration.
Last July, the UAE Mars rover Hope was successfully launched, firing its first shot of “fire exploration”. In addition, the United Arab Emirates has also turned its eyes to the moon. On November 15 last year, the United Arab Emirates announced plans to launch a small lunar rover called Rashid to study the moon. If the plan succeeds, the UAE Space Agency will become the first country in the Arab world and the fifth country in the world to successfully launch a spacecraft to the lunar surface.
