UAE telecom operators Etisalat by e& and du have updated their mobile phone display names to ‘Back2Earth’ to celebrate the anticipated homecoming of UAE astronaut Sultan AlNeyadi this weekend.
AlNeyadi has spent the past six months aboard the International Space Station (ISS) and is scheduled to return to Earth on Saturday, September 2. He will be accompanied by NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg, as well as Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev.
This is not the first time the UAE telecom networks have shown their support for the nation’s space missions through display name changes. In late February this year, the companies renamed their network displays to ‘UAE2Space’ to commemorate AlNeyadi’s departure for the ISS, marking it as the longest-duration space mission for an Arab astronaut.
In July 2020, Etisalat by e& and du changed their network names to ‘UAE2Mars’ in support of the launch of the Hope Probe, the UAE’s and the Arab world’s first mission to Mars. The telecoms had also honored UAE astronaut Hazzaa AlMansoori in September 2019 by adding ‘1stUAEAstro’ to their service provider names, celebrating him as the first Emirati astronaut to go to space.