CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) 鈥� Saudi Arabia鈥檚 first astronauts in decades rocketed toward the International Space Station on a chartered multimillion-dollar flight Sunday.
SpaceX launched the ticket-holding crew, led by a retired NASA astronaut now working for the company that arranged the trip. Also on board: a U.S. businessman who now owns a sports car racing team.
The four should reach the space station in their capsule Monday morning; they鈥檒l spend just over a week there before returning home with a splashdown off the Florida coast.
Sponsored by the Saudi Arabian government, Rayyanah Barnawi, a stem cell researcher, became the first woman from the kingdom to go to space. She was joined by Ali al-Qarni, a fighter pilot with the Royal Saudi Air Force.
They鈥檙e the first from their country to ride a rocket since a Saudi prince launched aboard shuttle Discovery in 1985. In a quirk of timing, they鈥檒l be greeted at the station by an astronaut from the .
鈥淭his is a dream come true for everyone,鈥� Barnawi said before the flight. 鈥淛ust being able to understand that this is possible. If me and Ali can do it, then they can do it, too.鈥�
Rounding out the visiting crew: Knoxville, Tennessee鈥檚 John Shoffner, former driver and owner of a sports car racing team that competes in Europe, and , the station鈥檚 first female commander who holds the U.S. record for most accumulated time in space: 665 days and counting.
鈥淚t was a phenomenal ride,鈥� Whitson said after reaching orbit. Her crewmates clapped their hands in joy.
It鈥檚 the second private flight to the space station organized by Houston-based Axiom Space. The first was last year by , with another retired NASA astronaut. The company plans to start adding its own rooms to the station in another few years, eventually removing them to form a stand-alone outpost available for hire.
Axiom won鈥檛 say how much Shoffner and Saudi Arabia are paying for the planned 10-day mission. The company had previously cited a ticket price of $55 million each.
NASA鈥檚 latest price list shows per-person, per-day charges of $2,000 for food and up to $1,500 for sleeping bags and other gear. Need to get your stuff to the space station in advance? Figure roughly $10,000 per pound ($20,000 per kilogram), the same fee for trashing it afterward. Need your items back intact? Double the price.
At least the email and video links are free.
The guests will have access to most of the station as they conduct experiments, photograph Earth and chat with schoolchildren back home, demonstrating how kites fly in space when attached to a fan.
After decades of shunning space tourism, NASA now embraces it with two private missions planned a year. The Russian Space Agency has been doing it, off and on, for decades.
鈥淥ur job is to expand what we do in low-Earth orbit across the globe,鈥� said NASA鈥檚 space station program manager Joel Montalbano.
SpaceX's first-stage booster landed back at Cape Canaveral eight minutes after liftoff, to be recycled for a future flight.
鈥淚t was a very, very exciting day,鈥� especially seeing the booster return to the launch site, said Axiom鈥檚 chief technology officer, Matt Ondler. Now comes the rest of the mission, he noted, 鈥渁ll toward a path of what we think the future of low-Earth orbit is.鈥�
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Marcia Dunn, The Associated Press
