The private mission that docked Monday in a capsule from the company SpaceX at the International Space Station (ISS, for the abbreviation in English) It arrived with four passengers on board, including two astronauts from Saudi Arabia, traveling as part of a private mission organized by the American company Axiom Space.

Rayyanah Barnawi, a scientist who became the first Saudi woman to go into space, and Ali Al Qarni, a fighter pilotare the first two citizens of that Persian Gulf country to reach the ISS.

“It was a good trip,” he said mission commander Peggy Whitson, 63, a former NASA astronaut who spent 665 days in orbit, more time in space than any other American. “It’s the smoothest docking I’ve ever experienced,” he said during the live video broadcast of the operation.

The fourth crew member is the American businessman John Shoffner.

About two hours after docking, the capsule’s hatch opened to allow the four passengers to enter the ISS, where they joined the seven astronauts already on board (three Russians, three Americans, and one Emirati).

The SpaceX rocket took off from the company’s base in Florida (southeast) on Sunday and the journey to the ISS took about 16 hours.

Named Ax-2, this mission is the second of a completely private nature to travel to the space station, following a first conducted in April 2022.

The members of the Ax-2 will remain on the ISS for approximately ten days, where they have to conduct twenty scientific experiments.

Axiom Space’s first private mission, Ax-1, launched on April 8, 2022 with four crewmembers spending 17 days on the space station conducting scientific outreach and educational tasks.

The Ax-2 marks another step in NASA and Axiom Space’s goal to build a commercial space station in low Earth orbit and harness the benefits of microgravity to improve life on Earth.