Dubai, United Arab Emirates -  September 28, 2019:    Hazzaa AlMansoori, the first Emirati astronaut, began his missions immediately after arriving safely at the International Space Station (ISS). AlMansoori arrived at 2:12am UAE time, on September 26 2019, aboard the Russian spacecraft Soyuz MS-15, along with Russia’s cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka, and US astronaut Jessica Meir.

The Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) highlighted that AlMansoori’s schedule for day 1 was relatively short because the spacecraft arrived to the ISS late the day before. He started his day by praying, then communicating with the team at the ground station in Moscow, and informing them of his daily schedule, and then speaking to Dr. Hanan AlSuwaidi, the flight surgeon for the mission.

MBRSC also said that AlMansoori recorded a short film about the ISS and his activities aboard, and then recorded his diary for 15 minutes.

AlMansoori then began the experiments involving schools in the UAE as part of MBRSC’s Science in Space initiative. In the first phase of the initiative, nearly 16 schools from the UAE, participated in the experiments with Hazzaa AlMansoori present at the workshops.

In phase 2, these experiments would be conducted in microgravity environment aboard the ISS and the results will then be compared with those done on earth, to contribute to supporting the UAE curriculum with new scientific materials that will be the result of the UAE's first human space flight.

AlMansoori will also perform three daily experiments to observe the impact of microgravity on seed germination rates, the growth of aquatic organisms, and the oxidisation rates of steel.

Furthermore, AlMansoori will conduct experiments to study Brain DTI, Osteology, motor control, time perception in microgravity, Fluidics (fluid dynamics in space), and DNAm-Age.