Look: UAE astronaut Sultan AlNeyadi’s name in Arabic on SpaceX Crew-6 mission patch

Aside from AlNeyadi, the names of the other crew members – commander Stephen Bowen, pilot William Hoburg, and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev – are also printed in the logo. Both Bowen’s and Hoburg’s names are written in English while Fedyaev name is typed in Russian script.

The mission patch has a dominant blue colour with the Roman numeral six, and pictures of the ISS, Space X rocket, stars, Mars, the Moon, and a dragon ship.

Dragon flight

In a tweet posted by AlNeyadi, he shared the patch’s description: “Sailing across the Crew 6 patch, the ship represents both our destination, the ISS, and the vessels that countless explorers have steered into the unknown.”

“The ISS anchors us, on the dawn of missions to the Moon and Mars. The ship’s sail, a symbol of the 2012 Cosmonaut class, has relative radii matching those of Earth, the Moon, and Mars. The Draco constellation represents the Commercial Crew Programme, and shares a name with the thrusters that manoeuvre our Dragon spacecraft. The ship’s Dragon figurehead looks to the future, as we also look back at Earth – grateful for the tireless hours of all who support our mission,” he added.

Long-term mission

AlNeyadi is set to become the first Arab astronaut to go on a long-term space mission, conducting numerous scientific experiments aboard the ISS for six months. He is the second Emirati astronaut to go to space, following Hazzaa AlMansoori’s flight to the ISS in 2019 for an eight-day mission.

The Crew-6 mission will be Dragon Endeavour’s fourth flight to the space station, which previously supported the Demo-2, Crew-2, and Axiom Mission 1 (Ax-1) missions. The Dragon spacecraft is at SpaceX’s Dragonland facility at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

SpaceX Crew-6 is the sixth crewed operational NASA Commercial Crew flight and is scheduled to launch on February 15, 2023.