Nora Al Matrooshi Becomes UAE's First Female Astronaut

Houston, we have a triumph. Mechanical engineer Nora Al Matrooshi made history on Tuesday when she became the first female Emirati astronaut. She and her colleague, former Dubai Police helicopter pilot Mohammed Mulla, are the first Arabs to ever graduate from NASA. The two were each given a special silver pin to celebrate their historic achievement as part of NASA’s 23rd class of astronauts.

Matrooshi and Al Mulla are now qualified to fly to the International Space Station, the moon, and, someday, Mars. To graduate, the two took lessons in spacewalking, robotics, space station systems, T-38 jet proficiency, and Russian language. This training took more than two years to complete, and is known for being an incredibly rigorous journey.

The members of the 23rd NASA class are expected to fly to the moon’s surface sometime after 2026, making them among the first astronauts to partake in moon missions since the Apollo astronauts of the ‘60s and ‘70s. It has not been decided if Matrooshi or Mulla will be selected for this mission or not.

In addition to welcoming two of their citizens into the global astronaut community, the UAE has been making other contributions to the field of space travel. Most notably, the UAE is constructing an airlock on NASA’s lunar-orbiting Gateway space station.