学进去

The new member to the UAE's astronaut training program, the first female Emirati (阿联酋) astronaut, hopes that her mechanical engineering degree will be her ticket to the moon.

Nora AlMatrooshi and her fellow trainee astronaut Mohammad AlMulla were selected from 4000 highly qualified candidates to lead the nation’s 9.8 million citizens into space.

The two are looking forward to the laborious 30-month program ahead of them which has already begun with them getting their divers’ licences, picking up the Russian language and coaching for their many media interviews—and will move on to flight and weightlessness school at the Johnson Space Centre in Texas and eventually cruel survival training.

“They will need mechanical engineers to build a base on the moon,” says the 28-year-old, who represented her nation at the Mathematics Olympics and worked as an engineer at the National Petroleum Construction Company.

AlMatrooshi says she has dreamed of the stars since kindergarten, when her teacher set up the classroom as the Lunar surface and the five-year-old future astronaut constructed a cardboard moonbase. That early longing to explore space charted her degree choice.

“I actually went after it. I chose to study a degree in mechanical engineering because of a documentary I watched when I was in high school. It was about a group of astronauts going to the International Space Station and the role of the mechanical engineer was highlighted,” she say.

Leading big construction projects in the desert has helped equip the daughter of two academics—a PhD father and English teacher mother—for Lunar construction.

AlMatrooshi’s fellow trainee astronaut, UAE police helicopter pilot AlMulla, meanwhile says astronaut training has been “a big career change”.

“I spent 15 years qualifying to be a pilot, including training in Australia for my commercial pilot’s licence,” says the father of two. “As a pilot you get used to mastering everything—suddenly I’m changing my path.”

“I’m a big fan of SpaceX. The rockets and even the fancy space suits. And hopefully all four of us—and all the astronauts who come after us will get to be a part of future missions—perhaps even to the moon eventually.”