United Arab Emirates names its first female astronaut
Dubai, Apr 10: The United Arab Emirates named the next two astronauts in its space programme Saturday, including the country's first female astronaut.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai who also serves as the autocratically ruled country's prime minister and vice president, named the two astronauts on Twitter.
PC: Khaleej Times
He identified Noura al-Matroushi as the UAE's first female astronaut, with her male counterpart as Mohammed al-Mulla.
A later government promotional video described al-Matroushi, born in 1993, as an engineer at the Abu Dhabi-based National Petroleum Construction Co.
Al-Mulla, born in 1988, serves as a pilot with Dubai police and heads their training division, the government said.
The two had been selected among more than 4,000 applicants in the UAE, a federation of seven sheikhdoms on the Arabian Peninsula that's also home to Abu Dhabi.
The two will undergo training at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
If al-Matroushi ends up going on a mission, she could become the first Arab woman in space, the UAE government said.
Anousheh Raissyan, an Iranian-American telecommunications entrepreneur and millionaire from Dallas, became the first Muslim woman and first Iranian in space when she traveled as a self-funded civilian to the International Space Station in 2006. She reportedly paid 20 million to travel there as a tourist.
The first Muslim in space was Saudi Prince Sultan bin Salman, who joined the crew of the shuttle Discovery in 1985.
In 2019, Maj. Hazzaa al-Mansoori became the UAE's first astronaut in space, spending an eight-day mission aboard the International Space Station.
The Emirates has had other recent successes in its space program. This February, the UAE put its Amal, or Hope, satellite in orbit around Mars, a first for the Arab world. In 2024, the country hopes to put an unmanned spacecraft on the moon.
The UAE also has set the ambitious goal of building a human colony on Mars by 2117.
انضمام نورا المطروشي لبرنامج الإمارات لرواد الفضاء كأول رائدة فضاء عربية إنجاز نوعي جديد للمرأة الإماراتية، نبارك لها هذا الاختيار ونتمنى لها ولزميلها رائد الفضاء محمد الملا كل التوفيق في مهمتهما ورفع اسم الإمارات عالياً.. تهانينا لقيادتنا الرشيدة وشعبنا الكريم pic.twitter.com/VcIslc6Dzh
— Manal MR AL Maktoum (@MMbinRashid) April 10, 2021
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Pakistan reports two more polio cases; Total tally now 52
ISLAMABAD: At least two more cases of poliovirus were reported in Pakistan, taking the number of infections to 52 so far this year, a report said on Friday.
“The Regional Reference Laboratory for Polio Eradication at the National Institute of Health has confirmed the detection of two more wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1) cases in Pakistan," an official statement said.
The fresh infections — a boy and a girl — were reported from the Dera Ismail Khan district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.
“Genetic sequencing of the samples collected from the children is underway," the statement read. Dera Ismail Khan, one of the seven polio-endemic districts of southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, has reported five polio cases so far this year.
Of the 52 cases in the country this year, 24 are from Balochistan, 13 from Sindh, 13 from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and one each from Punjab and Islamabad.
There is no cure for polio. Only multiple doses of the oral polio vaccine and completion of the routine vaccination schedule for all children under the age of five can keep them protected.
