In… out… in… and out again. With each release, picture all the twinkling stars in the night’s sky. There! Can you see the Big Dipper, its two outermost stars in its bowl pointing toward the North Star–the brightest star in the night sky? Or maybe you can spot Mars, with its steady, never blinking, reddish glow.

Tonight, I’m going to tell you about a rebel stargazer named Nora Al Matrooshi, who loves to sit outside on a clear night, staring up at the ancient constellations in the sky, and imagine herself walking on the surface of Earth’s silvery moon.

“We’ve landed!” someone called out, “on the moon!”

Nora and her classmates all crept out from under the tent. It was still dark around them, and everything they could see was coated in a layer of gray.

“Everything’s covered in gray fabric!” someone yelled.

“No, it’s Moon Dust!” their teacher corrected. Nora smiled wide as she peered through the opening in her cardboard helmet. She knew it was a game, but she loved to pretend it was  real.

The five-year-old astronauts explored this new gray world, including big rocks that felt a lot like their desks. Then they huddled together in their tent, removed their helmets, and ate freeze-dried ice cream sandwiches, just like real astronauts in space. The ice cream was hard and crunchy at first, but it was so sweet when it melted on Nora’s tongue. This was the most delicious treat of all, something made not for people on Earth, but for visitors of outer-space.

The astronauts learned about the planets in our solar system, and the billions of stars, shining down on us from light-years away. They learned about the first men to walk on the moon. But she kept wondering, why aren’t there any women who’ve been to the moon? Right then and there, Nora decided that one day she would board a real rocket ship, and blast off. One day, Nora planned to walk on the surface of the real moon.

The UAE is home to the tallest building in the world, the fastest roller coaster in the world, and even the biggest shopping mall in the world.

Nora loved growing up in Sharjah, but after that memorable day in kindergarten, she had her heart set on visiting somewhere even more exciting and far away.

When she came home from school and told her parents that she wanted to be an astronaut, they said,  “You can be anything, and you can go anywhere, as long as you put your mind to it.”

And that is exactly what she did.

Nora loved to read, write, and draw. She loved horseback riding, and spending time with her family. But always, her favorite activity was stargazing. She stared up at the sky at night, memorizing the patterns of the stars. Nora learned everything she could about space travel, and what it might take to become an astronaut.

Then, when Nora was in high school, she watched a documentary about a crew of astronauts living on the International Space Station, which is a science laboratory in outer space that orbits the Earth. Several hundred astronauts have lived and worked on the space station since it was first built. Nora longed to be one of them… spending her days floating around in zero gravity, eating freeze dried foods, and studying the vast skies. She also noticed that many of those crew members were engineers.

Aha!

Engineers are trained to analyze a lot of information in a short period of time, and to come up with creative solutions to big problems. Nora’s dad was an engineer and loved tackling new puzzles and questions. Nora decided to study engineering too. She was actually   training to work as a mechanical engineer, when the UAE’s government started a brand new program…. The United Arab Emirates Space Agency.

The new program was created to become a center of innovation in space, science and technology. Just a few years after the program began, they announced that they would begin training four people to go into space.. The first two people selected were both men, one was a pilot, and the other… an engineer. When the next round of applications opened up, for the 3rd and 4th astronaut trainee spots,  Nora knew this was her chance.

After all, to be an astronaut you have to show that you can work well under serious pressure – if you make a mistake up in space, it can be deadly. You have to be able to think quickly, and still make smart decisions. You have to take physical fitness and endurance tests to prove that you are capable of tackling all the pressures of living in zero gravity. And you have to prove that you can work really well as part of a team, and get along with people, since you might live in a tiny space station with a small crew for months, or even years at a time.

The application process took an entire year. Nora’s friends and family kept asking, “How did you do? When are they going to call you, when are they going to tell you if you’ve been selected?”

It was thrilling and nerve-wracking. Gazing up at those stars now, Nora felt like they were so close and yet so far away all at the same time.

“Is this Nora Al Matrooshi?” the voice on the other end of the line said.

“It is,” she replied.

And then, she heard the words that would change her life forever. She’d been chosen to be the very first Arab female astronaut in training!

Nora is still in intense training.  She’s learning survival skills, and flight training. She has to get her divers’ license – because the closest thing we have to feeling like you’re living in a place without gravity, is spending long periods of time, deep underwater. There are so many things that Nora will have to learn, and prove that she can do well, if she wants a chance to finally board a real rocket ship.

It’s overwhelming, but so exciting! And Nora’s journey is filled with firsts. Not just for her, but for her country, and for the world. If she does well in her training, she might have a chance to join NASA’s Artemis mission and become one of the first people of color to step onto the moon!

Ahh, that beautiful moon, shining down on us all, as we snuggle in for the night and let ourselves float into a dream.