A seven-year journey to send a UAE unmanned spacecraft to Mars was officially launched on Monday with Sheikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum describing the project as “a source of Arab pride”.
In a series of Twitter messages, the UAE’s Vice President and Prime Minister and ruler of Dubai said the UAE had taken the “first step” in building the Mars probe, after the UAE Space Agency and the Emirates Institution for Advanced Science and Technology, EIAST, signed an agreement to build the probe.
“I witnessed today with all pride, the first steps towards building the first Arab, Islamic probe to reach Mars,” Sheikh Mohammad tweeted.
“We started today, a seven year journey with a national team; through it we will cross hundreds of millions of miles to build globally competitive Emirati individuals,” he said.
“Building a Mars probe is a national job, a source of Arab pride and addition to human knowledge. We say to the people of our region join us in building a new history for our Arab nation.”
Last month, the board of the newly established UAE Space Agency approved its annual budget.
The probe will take nine months to make the more than 60 million kilometre journey to Mars and will mark the UAE out as one of only nine countries with space programmes to explore the Red Planet.
The project also aims to develop Emirati human capital and boost the space technology industry as a sustainable driver of the UAE’s increasingly diversified economy.
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