A spacecraft with an all-private astronaut team splashed down off the coast of Texas in the Gulf of Mexico late on Tuesday. Two of the four astronauts on board are from Saudi Arabia, including the first Arab woman to go into orbit. Saudi Arabia is one of nine Middle Eastern countries involved in space exploration right now. Marco Werman finds out what’s behind the interest in space around the Arab world from Tim Fernholz, a senior reporter at Quartz and the author of, “Rocket Billionaires: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and the New Space Race.”
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