A Dubai resident who has waited 17 years to fly on Virgin Galactic’s space tourism flight says her time to lift off is only a few months away.
Namira Salim, 52, was the first Pakistani and UAE resident to buy a suborbital flight ticket from Sir Richard Branson’s company in 2006, earning her the title of Founder Astronaut.
She paid $200,000, less than half the $450,000 which is reportedly what a seat on the flight costs now.
Artist Ms Salim watched Thursday’s first commercial flight by Virgin Galactic, which took three Italian passengers to the edge of space, at an altitude of 85.1km above the New Mexico desert.
Virgin Galactic completes first commercial spaceflight
She also attended the company’s inaugural flight in 2021, of which Sir Richard was part.
“My flight is very soon … it is in a matter of a few months,” said Ms Salim, who has to keep the precise date confidential as of now.
“I'm very excited because my flight is going to be much earlier, on being a founder.
“The first commercial flight builds confidence in us and to know that we’re in safe hands.”
'My father taught me the night sky'
She has had a passion for space since she a child, often telling her parents and family members that she wanted to be an astronaut.
“When I was a child, I used to cry to my parents, particularly to my father, to send me to space,” she said.
“I used to say I don't want to play with toys. I told everyone in my family I will grow up to become an astronaut and I really believed it.
“And then I started getting inspired by the night sky, because my father was the one who actually taught me the constellations of the northern sky.”
While Ms Salim had hoped her parents would see her lift off into space one day, her mother died in 2017 and her father in 2019.
“So I really owe this to my father. My space flight will really remind me of my father and my mother,” she said.
Ms Salim has an adventurous spirit, having gone scuba diving in the Bahamas, trained as a pilot, travelled to the North and South poles and did a tandem skydive from an altitude of almost nine kilometres, in the world’s highest drop zone near Mount Everest.
“I think my mother wanted me to be more safe and she was more worried about it [the flight],” Ms Salim said.
“She was not the type to encourage it too much, but my father, he helped inspired it. And that's how the journey began.”
Excited about the new space age
Ms Salim's flight comes at a time when more private companies are investing in space, allowing non-government missions to take place.
Virgin Galactic expects its next flight to take place in August, followed by monthly flights.
Blue Origin, owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, also operates space tourism flights and has flown 32 people into suborbit since 2021.
Elon Musk's SpaceX also launches private missions to space.
“It's the democratisation of space, which is what's leading space tourism to become a reality for the common man to go to space commercially,” Ms Salim said.
Passengers can expect about a 70 to 90-minute flight experience on Virgin Galactic.
A mother ship carries the VSS Unity spaceplane to an altitude high enough for it to be released and then to the boundary of space.
Passengers experience about four minutes of weightlessness, before the plane returns to Earth for a landing on a runway in the desert.
Ms Salim is expected to become the first woman space tourist from the UAE, if all goes as planned.
British billionaire Hamish Harding, who lived in Dubai, became the first space tourist from the UAE when he flew on Blue Origin's suborbital rocket last year.
He was one of the passengers on the Titanic submersible that imploded in the Atlantic Ocean this month, killing him and four others.
Helping young people get involved in space
While Ms Salim is excited about travelling to suborbit, she is also passionate about her non-profit organisation – Space Trust – which works on several education initiatives.
One of them includes helping young people in Kenya and Arizona to build the OG2030 nanosatellite, which has already been selected by the United Nations to launch aboard the Vega C rocket free of charge.
