HOUSTON: Emirati astronaut Nora AlMatrooshi has become the first Arab woman to graduate from NASA’s training program, ready to blast off into the cosmos.
AlMatrooshi, 30, remembers an elementary school lesson about space in which her teacher simulated a trip to the lunar surface, complete with arts-and-crafts spacesuits and a tent for a rocket ship.
“We got out of the tent, and we saw that she had turned off the lights in our classroom. She had everything covered in gray cloth, and she was telling us that we were on the surface of the Moon,” AlMatrooshi told AFP.
“That day resonated with me, and it stuck with me. And I remember thinking, ‘This is amazing. I actually want to do this for real, I want to actually get to the surface of the Moon.’ And that’s when it all started,” she recalled, dressed in a blue flight suit embroidered with her name and the UAE flag.
AlMatrooshi, 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.
AlMatrooshi, who wears a hijab as part of her Muslim faith, 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.
“Once you get into the EMU you put on a (communications) cap (fitted with microphones and speakers), which… covers your hair,” she said.
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.
