An Emirati astronaut on a mission aboard the International Space Station

Vice President of the United Arab Emirates and Ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, announced, Friday, that an Emirati astronaut will be sent into space on a six-month mission aboard the International Space Station.

A “new milestone” was reached with “the signing of a new agreement to send the first Arab astronaut on a 180-day mission to the International Space Station,” Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum wrote on his Twitter account.

“I am proud of the UAE’s youth,” he added.

According to the Emirati newspaper, The National, the agreement was signed on Wednesday between the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Center and Axiom Space at the UAE embassy in Washington.

The astronaut will be part of the SpaceX Crew-6 mission, scheduled for launch in 2023, according to the same source.

The first Emirati was sent into space in September 2019 for an eight-day mission, aboard a Soyuz rocket from Russia’s Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

In July of the same year, the country launched, from the Japanese Space Center in Tanegashima, an unmanned spacecraft carrying the “Amal” probe around the orbit of Mars, as part of the first interplanetary mission in the Arab world.

The UAE also plans to send an unmanned rover to the moon by 2024.