Bassam, as a reserved candidate, representing the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Arabs in this trip, they went to the United States to receive training at Lyndon Johnson Space Center in the city of Houston, Texas, on April 1st, 1985, after National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced that the space shuttle would be launched initially on June 12, and they engaged in intensive training for 10 weeks, noting that the training period for preparation of an astronaut to become a payload specialist ranges between 6 to 18 months.
