Usbek & Rica – “I am the first African to go into space, but I won’t be the last”

For technical, economic and cultural reasons as well, the space sector is currently undergoing a major transformation. after advent new spacesynonymous with opening up reusable commercial launch projects designed by private companies like SpaceX, Blue Origins or Virgin Galactics, which ended up being “game-changers” after years of unsuccessful testing, there is now talk in the sector. NextSpaceor even Renaissancereferring to the European Renaissance in the sixteenth century^H a century.

Thus, this paradigm shift is also cultural: diversity and inclusion are on the agenda in the spatial agenda. A transformation that was particularly embodied in The first all-female Spacewalk in 2019, and then two years later with The Journey of Dr. Sean Proctor, the first African-American woman to pilot a spacecraft on the Inspiration4 mission, aboard SpaceX. The year 2022 will see the first flight of a Mexican woman, Katia Echazarreta, which, in particular, will earn her Cover of the national edition of the magazine Vogue magazine.

In addition to the undoubtedly necessary disagreements about this new space race funded by billionaires, we were able to speak with Sarah Sabry, the distinguished witness to these recent developments, who in 2022 became the first Egyptian, Arab and African woman to launch into space, in this case On board the Blue Origin NS-22 flight.

Sarah Sabry had already distinguished herself in 2021 by becoming the first Egyptian to participate in a “similar mission”, a Lunar mission simulation It was staged for research purposes in an old, renovated nuclear bunker, and I’ve had a chance to talk about it in columns.Osbek and Rica. You return here to these two experiments.