Like her ancestors, UAE astronaut Nora Al Matrousi has spent much of her life looking at the stars and dreaming of going to the moon.
This week she became the first woman of Arab descent to complete NASA’s training program and is now ready to conquer space.
Al Matrousi, 30, remembers a class about space when she was in elementary school, in which the teacher simulated a mission to the surface of the Moon, with spacesuits made from crafts and a children’s tent in the shape of a rocket.
“We came out of the tent and saw that (the teacher) had turned off the lights in the classroom. He had covered everything with gray cloth and was telling us that we were on the surface of the Moon.”Al Matrousi tells AFP.
“That day affected me, it had a big impact on me. And I remember thinking ‘This is amazing. This is what I really want to do, I really want to go to the surface of the Moon. And then it all started”recalls Al Matrousi, dressed in her blue spacesuit with her name on it and the flag of the United Arab Emirates sewn into it.
Ready for her first trip
Al Matrousi, a mechanical engineer who has worked in the oil industry, was one of two female astronaut candidates selected in 2021 by the United Arab Emirates Space Agency (UAESA) to participate in a NASA training program.
Today, after two years of hard work – including practicing spacewalks – Al Matrousi, her compatriot Mohammed Al Mullah and ten others from the same training program are fully certified astronauts.
Their team can now participate in NASA missions to the International Space Station (ISS), the Artemis program (a NASA-led manned spaceflight program to explore the Moon) and, if all goes well well, they might even reach Mars.
“I want to give further impetus to humanity. I want humanity to go to the moon and beyond. And I want to join this journey”says Al Matrousi.
Although she is NASA’s first Arab graduate, other women have already participated in private space missions, including Saudi Arabian biomedical researcher Rayana Barnawi, who last year boarded the International Space Station on Axiom Space, and Egyptian-Lebanese engineer Sara Sambri from the crew of the 2022 flight with American billionaire Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin.
Special construction space hijab
Al Matrousi, who as a Muslim wears a hijab (Muslim head covering), explains that NASA developed a strategy to allow her to have her hair covered while still wearing the white space suit and helmet, known as EMU (Extravehicular Mobility). Unit).
“When you wear the EMU you wear a communication headset, equipped with microphones and speakers, which covers the hair”says.
The problem arises from the moment Al Matrousi takes off her hijab to put on the headset. And it is further complicated by the fact that only certain approved materials can be worn through the EMU.
“The suit engineers ended up sewing a special hijab for me that I can wear inside out, then put on the suit, then the headset and when I take it off my hair is covered. I so appreciate what they did for me”he emphasizes.
With her custom-made suit, Al Matrousi will be ready to go into space with her fellow astronauts.
NASA is planning the first American mission to land on the moon, Artemis 3, in 2026. “I think it’s hard to become an astronaut, regardless of your religion or background. I don’t think it’s any harder if you’re a Muslim. But being a Muslim I realized the contribution of my ancestors, the Muslim academics and scientists who came before me and studied the stars. My becoming an astronaut is the evolution of what they started thousands and thousands of years ago.”concludes the astronaut speaking to AFP.
SOURCE: APE-ME
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