On this day in space! June 17, 1985: First Arab and Muslim in Space

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On June 17, 1985, the space shuttle Discovery launched payload specialist Sultan Salman Abdelize Al Saud as the first Arab and first Muslim in space.

On June 17, 1985, the space shuttle Discovery launched on NASA's STS-51G mission, carrying payload specialist Sultan Salman Abdelize Al Saud, a Royal Saudi Air Force pilot who became the first Arab and first Muslim in space.

And because he was a prince in the House of Saud, he became the first member of a royal family to go to space.

Saudi astronaut Sultan Salman Abdelize Al-Saud, a Saudi prince, logs notes while floating in the middeck of space shuttle discovery during the STS-51G mission to deploy the Arabsat-1B communications satellite in June 1985. (Image credit: NASA)

He was 28 years old at the time and holds the record for being the youngest person to fly on the space shuttle.

During the mission, he helped deploy a communications satellite called ARABSAT-1B for the Arab Satellite Communications Organization.

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Hanneke Weitering
Hanneke Weitering
Contributing expert

Hanneke Weitering is a multimedia journalist in the Pacific Northwest reporting on the future of aviation at FutureFlight.aero and Aviation International News and was previously the Editor for Spaceflight and Astronomy news here at Space.com. As an editor with over 10 years of experience in science journalism she has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos.