As Malaysia's space program prepares to send the country's first astronaut to the space station next year, it is confronting some of the standard first-astronaut questions: what scientific research to pursue, which local delicacy to bring aboard, and who among the eager candidates should go. It is also tackling some more unusual quandaries, such as when to conduct the five daily Islamic prayers on an orbiting ship where a day lasts only 90 minutes.
In April the Malaysian national space agency held a two-day conference, Islam and Life in Space, to address these issues. One of the star attractions was a computer program called Muslims in Space, which calculates when spacefaring Muslims should pray and, using spherical trigonometry, discerns the direction of the Ka'aba, the holy shrine in Mecca that Muslims face during prayer. To settle the timing question, the software divides the space station's 90-minute "days" into the same ...
