Written by Amira Shehata
Friday, March 31, 2023 05:00 AM
There are a number of astronauts in space periodically and continuously, where he stays Astronaut duration of time in International Space Station To conduct experiments with it over a period of months, then return to the earth and others come, and among the pioneers there are Muslims, who need to perform their prayers in this special environment of zero gravity and the conditions of rotation around the earth at a speed that makes it difficult to determine the qiblah, so we monitor for you the details of doing this according to what came from Previous initiatives to solve the problem.
How was the first prayer held on the International Space Station?
Sheikh Muzaffar Shakur, the first Malaysian to go into space on a ten-day trip in 2007, held the first prayer aboard the International Space Station, and his trip was to conduct experiments aboard the International Space Station related to the properties and growth of liver and leukemia cells.
According to Weird, Malaysia’s National Islamic Fatwa Council issued special guidelines to guide its practices and those of future Muslim astronauts, as it was relieved of the duty of attempting to kneel during prayer, a difficult feat in zero gravity.
As for the Qibla, their decision was to determine the Qibla “based on what was possible” for the astronaut to face Mecca during prayer. There are two different schools of thought to determine the Qibla: the commonly used Great Circle method, and the less common Direction Line method.
Looking at a flat map using any standard projection shows that a vector line, taken from the Johnson Space Center in Houston to Mecca, for example, runs east-southeast, and the numbers also indicate that, the space center is north-west of the Kaaba, so Any trip to the Holy City would, of course, have to be to the southeast.
There is also the great circle method, the shortest distance between two points on a sphere, between Houston and Mecca which deviates at first to the northeast, and then deviates south to the Saudi Peninsula.
Muslim scholars have known since the ninth century AD that the Great Ring Road provides the shortest route to Mecca from anywhere in the world, and this method is the root of almost every qibla compass on the internet.
But how is this done in space? Mathematically, Shakur needed to place the International Space Station and Mecca on the same imaginary field, either by comparing the location on Earth directly below the International Space Station with the real Kaaba, or by projecting the Kaaba into space.
What came to issue the UAE Islamic Affairs?
The initiative of the Department of Islamic Affairs and Charitable Activities in Dubai was launched, which launched a version that is the first of its kind in this specialty to estimate prayer and fasting times for the astronauts of the International Space Station, since 2019, when Hazza Al Mansouri was the first Emirati astronaut to be provided with instructions for fasting and praying at the station. space international.
The directives indicated to Al-Mansouri that it is obligatory to pray according to what coincides with prayer times with Makkah Al-Mukarramah, the kiss of Muslims in the world.
Performing the prayer posed another challenge for Al-Mansoori, who had to turn towards the qiblah, which is a difficult matter in the zero-gravity environment of space, so the instructions stipulated that he must face the planet Earth during prayer.
It is worth noting that the Emirati astronaut, Sultan Al Neyadi, is now at the International Space Station during the month of Ramadan, and his journey will continue for 6 months, starting from its launch in early March.
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