The United Arab Emirates, the first Arab state and the fifth country in the world to reach Mars, needs more scientists to drive its economic future towards technology.
Omran Sharaf, project director of the Emirates Hope Mission to Mars, said this after inaugurating Expo 2020 Dubai’s Space Week.
Sharaf also participated in a public-facing event named ‘The Peoples Mission: Citizens in Space Exploration’ to launch Space Week at Expo.
On February 9, 2021, the UAE became the second country to successfully enter Mars’ orbit on its first attempt.
Sharaf stressed on the importance of training local scientists and developing an advanced science and technology sector to boost the country’s economy.
He continued that his country needs to acquire a competitive knowledge-based, post-oil economy that will only be achieved through an advanced science and technology sector.
For the survival of the UAE, the region and the world, Emirati scientists are required to help build solutions, and ultimately deliver systems that will work in space, Sharaf added.
Lauding his country’s Mars mission, he said that a young nation reached the Red Planet in less than 50 years. He stressed on the importance of unity among a nation and said now time has come to work for the rest of the world.
The UAE Space Agency has recently unveiled its new Emirati interplanetary mission to further enhance the country’s space engineering and exploration capabilities.
Under the new mission, a spacecraft would be launched in 2028 that would travel 3.6 billion kilometres during its five-year journey. The mission intends to study the asteroid belt between the Red Planet and Jupiter. It would first orbit Venus in mid-2028, then Earth in mid-2029 to build the velocity required to reach the main asteroid belt in 2030.
The spacecraft would eventually land on an asteroid 560 million kilometres from Earth in 2033, making the UAE fourth country to land on an asteroid.
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