Sheikh Mansour

His Highness Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Vice President of the UAE, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of the Presidential Office, congratulated the people of the Emirates on the safe return of Sultan Al Neyadi to Earth after completing the longest space mission in Arab history.

Sheikh Mansour said on the X platform: “We congratulate the people of the Emirates on the safe return of Sultan Al Neyadi to Earth after completing the longest space mission in Arab history. We thank all the national work teams and partners who contributed to achieving this historic scientific achievement to serve humanity. With God’s grace, the Emirates continues to enhance its contributions in the field of space.”

The four astronauts returned to Earth early on Monday after a six-month stay at the International Space Station.

Their SpaceX capsule parachuted into the Atlantic off the Florida coast.

Returning were NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Warren "Woody” Hoburg, Russia's Andrei Fedyaev and the United Arab Emirates' Sultan Al Neyadi, the first person from the Arab world to spend an extended time in orbit.

Before departing the space station, they said they were craving hot showers, steaming cups of coffee and the ocean air since arriving in March. Their homecoming was delayed a day because of poor weather at the splashdown locations, but in the end, provided a spectacular middle-of-the-night show as the capsule streaked through the sky over Cape Canaveral toward a splashdown near Jacksonville.