Jewish and Arab astronauts launched from Baikonur in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, headed for the International Space Station.
NASA astronaut Jessica Meir, a Swedish-American-Israeli Jew, took off for space along with Russia’s Oleg Skripochka and the United Arab Emirates’s Hazzaa al-Mansoori.
Mansoori, the first Emirati astronaut, is scheduled to return to Earth on Oct. 3 with NASA’s Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin. Meir and Skripochka are expected to stay on the ISS until the spring of 2020.
While not the first Muslim, Mansoori will be the first Arab on the space station.
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