Sir Richard Branson, the founder of the Virgin Group, will be boarding Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity and blasting off to space on Sunday.
Ahead of the mission, Branson and two of the crew members, Colin Bennett and Sirisha Bandla, had an exclusive chat with The Kris Fade Show on Virgin Radio Dubai.
Sir Richard Branson says that that he has waited 17 years to make this trip a reality.
Meanwhile, Sirisha Bandla will become the second Indian-born woman to fly to space.
She told The Kris Fade Show that there’s "no traditional route to get to what you dream of.”
Born in India and raised in Texas, Bandla spoke about the journey to becoming an astronaut and joining Virgin Galactic as the Vice President of Government Affairs and Research Operations.
The 34-year-old credited Sunita Williams and Kalpana Chawla, both astronauts with Indian backgrounds, as pioneers with whom she felt a sense of “shared identity”.
Bandla hopes to further the chain of motivation by establishing a “downstream effect on many kids in the future” and “make space available to all”.
Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity takes off with six crew members on board on Sunday at 5PM GST and will be live-streamed on the virgin galactic website and on their social media channels on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.
The Israeli military acknowledged on Monday that Palestinian civilians were harmed at aid distribution centres in the Gaza Strip, saying that new instructions had been issued to Israeli forces following "lessons learned".
Palestinians in northern Gaza reported one of the worst nights of Israeli bombardment in weeks after the military issued mass evacuation orders on Monday, while Israeli officials were due in Washington for a new ceasefire push by the Trump administration.
A Ukrainian F-16 fighter pilot died in a crash while repelling a Russian air attack that involved hundreds of drones, cruise and ballistic missiles, authorities said on Sunday, as Moscow intensifies night-time air barrages in the fourth year of war.
Firefighters in Turkey are battling wildfires for a second day raging in the western province of Izmir fanned by strong winds, the forestry minister and local media said on Monday.
Two firefighters were shot dead while responding to a fire in northern Idaho and the body of a man was later found with a gun nearby, the Kootenai County Sheriff's Office said on Sunday, as it lifted a shelter-in-place order.