Saudi CubeSat gets golden ticket on doomed SLS rocket

Trump greenlights slot for Riyadh as NASA's pricey booster teeters on the brink

NASA will launch a Saudi satellite aboard what could be its penultimate SLS rocket on the Artemis II mission following a deal announced in Riyadh by US President Donald Trump and de facto Saudi ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Trump is keen to axe NASA's Moon rocket, but considering the $600 billion investment the Saudi government has announced, sticking a CubeSat in a spacecraft adapter seems small fry in comparison.

NASA launched ten shoebox-sized CubeSats on Artemis I. The satellites were held in the stage adapter on top of the second stage and deployed following the trans-lunar injection burn. A week after Artemis I's launch on November 16, 2022, NASA reported that six CubeSats were "operational and working well."

As well as Saudi Arabia, NASA has agreements with the German space agency DLR and the Korea AeroSpace Administration for CubeSats to ride to space on Artemis II. The CubeSats will be deployed after the Orion spacecraft, with its crew of four astronauts, is safely on its way to the Moon.

According to NASA: "The Saudi Space Agency CubeSats will collect data on space radiation, solar X-rays, solar energetic particles, and magnetic fields."

NASA has history with Saudi Arabia. Just under 40 years ago, it launched Sultan bin Salman Al Saud into space aboard Space Shuttle Discovery on STS-51-G. Al Saud became the first Arab and royal family member to fly into space. He flew as a Payload Specialist or, as retired astronaut Mike Mullane put it in his autobiography, Riding Rockets, a "Part Timer" due to the lower levels of training required compared to a career astronaut.

More recently, Axiom Space flew two Saudi astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2023.

The launch could mark one of the last hurrahs for NASA's SLS. If the proposed cuts in the US administration's "skinny" budget are passed, Artemis III will be the final mission launched on the SLS. The monster rocket is slated for termination, and NASA has been directed to look at commercial alternatives.

Saudi Arabian science has also flown with SpaceX, on the Fram2 mission, which included an experiment to study the effect of microgravity on the human eye. Previous satellites developed by the kingdom include SaudiSat 5A and 5B, a pair of imaging satellites launched from China in 2018. ®