Arab astronaut claims exemption from Ramadan fasting while in space

Texas: Emirati astronaut Sultan Al-Neyadi, who is soon to become the first Arab astronaut to spend six months in space, said on Wednesday he will not be fasting during Ramadan on his trip to space.

Neyadi’s trip to space is scheduled for February 26. He will be taking a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station (ISS) along with the SpaceX Dragon Crew-6 consisting NASA astronauts Warren Hoburg and Stephen Bowen, as well as Andrey Fedyaev of Russia.

Neyadi responded that his situation qualifies as an exception when asked how he will observe the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims generally fast from sunrise till sunset.

Neyadi called himself the ultimate traveller, said he can have breakfast, “It’s not required because fasting is not required if someone is not feeling well,” he said.

Therefore, anything that might endanger the operation or put the crew members in danger is actually approved, and we are allowed to eat enough food.

Neyadi is the second Arab person to go in Space. Earlier, Hazzaa Al-Mansoori spent eight days aboard the ISS in September 2019.

On Wednesday, questions about whether political tensions on Earth, such as those surrounding Ukraine, crossed over into space were posed to the NASA astronauts and the Russian cosmonaut at the Johnson Space Center.

As a veteran of three space shuttle missions and over 20 years of working and training with cosmonauts, NASA’s Bowen remarked, “It’s always been great.”

“Once in space, there is just one crew, one vehicle, and one shared objective,” he said.
Fedyaev referred to the “extremely lengthy history” of Russian and American space collaboration.

The Russian astronaut stated that “the life of humans in space on the International Space Station is truly offering a really wonderful example for how people should be living on Earth.”

NASA representatives predicted a five-day handover between the four members of Dragon Crew-5, who have been on the ISS since October, and the members of SpaceX Dragon Crew-6.

Three astronauts who had their Soyuz crew capsule damaged by a minor meteoroid strike in December are also now aboard the ISS.

To return the trio—Russian cosmonauts Dmitry Petelin and Sergei Prokopyev and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio—to Earth, Russia intends to launch an empty spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) on February 20.

After the meteoroid collision, their Soyuz MS-22 crew capsule developed a radiator coolant leak.

In September, MS-22 carried Petelin, Prokopyev, and Rubio to the International Space Station after taking off from
Kazakhstan’s Baikonur Cosmodrome, which is run by Russia.

It has been decided to extend their stay on the ISS by several more months. Originally, they were supposed to return to Earth in the same ship in March.

Since the 1960s, Russia has launched humans into space using the venerable but ageing Soyuz spacecraft.

Since the beginning of the Russian war in Ukraine, space has remained a unique area of collaboration between Moscow and Washington.

Following the Cold War “Space Race,” US-Russian cooperation expanded at the time of the ISS launch in 1998.

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