American Notes Space

Muslims who are traveling get a special dispensation: they are required to pray only three times a day instead of the usual five. For seven days next month, however, one itinerant supplicant may find it difficult to perform the ritual of touching his forehead to the floor during prayers. As a "payload specialist" on the next voyage of the space shuttle Discovery, Saudi Prince % Sultan ibn Salman ibn Abdul Aziz al Saud, a nephew of King Fahd's, will help supervise the launch of Arabsat 1B, a communications satellite funded by 22 Arab countries. Says he: "My flight has great significance. More young people in Saudi Arabia will look at the mission and open their eyes to technology and science."

A U.S.-educated jet pilot and former press-relations officer for the Saudi Arabian Olympic Committee, Prince Sultan, 28, has been in training at the Johnson Space Center in Houston since early April. His other duties aboard the Discovery will include acting as a subject for medical experiments. One study will examine a curious side effect of low-gravity orbital flight: a height gain of up to two inches. Returning to earth can cut an astronaut back down to size in more ways than one.