Saudi woman shooting for new heights

Saudi Arabia will send its first woman astronaut on a space mission this year in the latest move to revamp its ultra-conservative image.

Rayyana Barnawi will join fellow Saudi Ali Al-Qarni on a 10-day mission to the International Space Station, reports said.

They will fly to the ISS aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft as part of a mission by Axiom Space company.

Also on board will be Peggy Whitson, a former NASA astronaut, and John Shoffner, a Tennessee businessman who will serve as pilot.

The Ax-2 crew will be launched by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from launch complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Oil-rich Saudi Arabia will be follow United Arab Emirates, which in 2019 became the first Arab country to send astronaut Hazzaa al-Mansoori into space.

Another fellow Emirati, Sultan al-Neyadi, will also make a voyage to the space station later this month.

Saudi leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been trying to shake off the kingdom's image through a push for reforms.

Since his rise to power in 2017, women have been allowed to drive and to travel abroad without a male guardian and their proportion in the workforce has more than doubled since 2016 - from 17 percent to 37 percent.

Saudi Arabia's foray into space is not its first. In 1985, Prince Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, an air force pilot, took part in a US-organized space mission, becoming the first Arab Muslim to travel into space.