Jesus Appeared To Me In Space During Prayer Facing Macca. Saudi Astronaut Sees JESUS In Space.
Seven years of centrifuge training, underwater EVA simulation, Russian language classes, systems engineering courses, medical certifications, psychological evaluations, 7 years of becoming something beyond what I was born as.
When the mission launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a Tuesday morning in March and that rocket punched through the atmosphere and the shaking suddenly stopped and I looked out the small port hole window and saw the black of space for the first time, I wept.
I’m not ashamed to say that.
I wept and then I composed myself because I was the first Saudi in space and I knew every camera, every news channel, every screen in the kingdom was watching.
Part of my mission profile, which had been carefully negotiated between the Saudi Space Commission and NASA, included a publicly documented moment, the first Islamic prayer performed in orbit.
This was not just personal worship.
This was symbolic.
This was historical.
The Ulima, the religious scholars back home, has spent months deliberating over the logistics.
How does a Muslim pray in space where there is no fixed direction to Mecca, where the sun rises and sets every 90 minutes?
where the concept of a prayer time becomes almost philosophical.
They had issued a special fatwa.
They had provided guidance.
I had memorized it.
I had practiced it in the neutral buoyancy lab.
I was prepared or I thought I was.
On day 17 of the mission, I performed the prayer.
The NASA public affairs team had arranged a small camera.
Mission control in Houston had coordinated with the Saudi Space Commission.
It was broadcast live.
I floated in the middle of the laboratory module, steadied myself with one hand against the rack, and I performed my prayer, facing what the calculations told me was the approximate direction of Mecca.
The camera recorded it.
The commentators in Riyad wept with pride.
My mother watched from our family home in the Armalaz district and called my sister afterward and said she felt she had seen something holy.
But here is what the camera didn’t capture.
