Sara Sabry
It was with Mario Ferreira to space in 2022. Engineer Sara Sabry recalls space trip: “How is the possibility of death accept?”.
The first Egyptian person and Arab woman going to space spoke about the physical and psychological challenges she faced during the missions in which she was involved.
Em 2022, Sara Sabry He joined the mission crew aboard the New Shepard Rocket and alongside Portuguese businessman Mário Ferreira.
During the conference that took place on Tuesday, under the Web Summit Rio 2025, the engineer recalled her physical preparation for the missions, which included strength and resistance training. Beyond the physical effort involved, also highlighted the psychological influence of space travel – a little approached and even underestimated theme in some cases, although it is as important as the physical side of the experience.
“It’s something we really underestimate because we don’t really think about the influence that seeing the earth of space has on a person’s brain. But if we think well, we don’t evolve biologically to experience something like this. So it has a big impact on the way we see the world, it really changes our brain,” he said.
In fact, it really changes: them in space. But for Sabry, who was already working as an instructor of yoga and crossfit, the physical component was not exactly a problem. The psychological aspect, on the other hand, involved some personal challenges, such as dealing with the possibility of things going wrong and even death.
“What was really new to me was the psychological part,” said Sara. “As we deal with the idea that things can go wrong, how do we accept the possibility of death … How to accept all this? This changes deeply,” he added.
Sara stressed that the missions are currently much safer, but they are still not totally risk -free – and therefore prior preparation is needed to face the possible complications that may arise along the way. “It’s really something that completely changes our relationship with fear. It changes our relationship with ourselves,” concluded the astronaut.
