Free Astronomy Magazine November-December 2022

23 NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2022 ASTRO PUBLISHING The astronaut program intends to send two citizens to space — at least one of them a woman — as early as 2023, whose mission will represent a historical first one for the Kingdom and which is considered a giant leap for Saudi women. That mission will be organized by Houston-based company Axiom Space which is the first company to take advantage of NASA’s commer- cial spaceflight participant program, which was set up in 2019. Axiom handles the logistics for its crewed missions, including the arrange- ments for training, launch and re- covery, with reimbursement to NASA for the space agency’s ex- penses. Neither Axiom nor the Saudi gov- ernment provided the name for the female astronaut, who will be ac- companied by another Saudi and two Americans as part of Axiom’s second private mission to the space station, slated for early 2023. Axiom Space is the commercial space industry’s only full-service orbital mission provider, conducting end-to- end crewed missions. Axiom’s broad range of services includes training and flying private astronauts, access to training facilities and instructors, hardware and safety certification, and operational on-orbit manage- ment. Candidates for flight com-