CAPE CANAVERAL — Saudi astronauts Rayyanah Barnawi and Ali Al-Qarni and fellow travelers returned to Earth early Wednesday morning after a ten-day trip to the International Space Station.

The SpaceX capsule carrying the four parachuted into the Gulf of Mexico, just off the Florida panhandle, 12 hours after undocking from the orbiting lab.

Barnawi became the first Arab woman to go on a space mission when she launched with her colleague Al Qarni on a trip to the orbital outpost last Monday.

Barnawi wiped away tears as she wrapped up her experiments and prepared to leave the space station.

“Every story comes to an end and this is only the beginning of a new era for our country and our region,” she said.

They were accompanied by retired NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson and John Shoffner.

Shoffner, a Knoxville, Tennessee, businessman who started a race car team, paid his own way to the space station.

During their time in the orbiting laboratory, the AX-2 astronauts successfully executed over 20 STEAM (Science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) outreach engagements and more than 20 research studies in microgravity, as well as eight media events.

On Monday, Al Qarni and Barnawi performed their final STEAM outreach event demonstrating heat transfer in space. During this event, Barnawi and Al Qarni monitored the heat transfer of a wire as it heated and cooled.

The astronauts conducted 14 pioneering scientific experiments as part of their scientific mission, which included six experiments in the brain and nervous system, four experiments in immune cells, and an experiment in water seeding technology. — SG