After sending one of their nationals in orbit for the first time in their short history in 2019, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) launched a Mars exploration mission on Monday July 20, confirming their status as the number one Arab space power and pretending to conquer the Red Planet.
An Emirati-made probe, dubbed “Al-Amal” (Hope), the size of a 4X4 jeep, flew to Mars, aboard a Japanese rocket, which took off from the Tanegashima launch pad in the southwest of the archipelago. This unmanned craft, which was assembled with the help of American scientists, is supposed to approach its object of study in February 2021, the year of the fiftieth anniversary of the creation of the UAE, a federation of seven city-states, on the Arab side of the Persian Gulf.
This interplanetary mission, the first ever led by an Arab state, aims to collect information on the atmosphere and climate of Mars. Two other neighboring Earth study missions should begin in the coming days, one Chinese and the other American. A third, Japanese, is announced for 2024.
Very big ambitions
In the fall of 2019, the Emirati fighter pilot Hazza Al Mansouri had spent a week in the International Space Station, becoming the third astronaut in the history of the Arab world, after the Saudi Sultan Ben Salman Ben Abdelaziz in 1985 and the Syrian Mohamed Fares in 1987.
If the kingdom of Arabia and the regime of Damascus stopped there in terms of space conquest, the UAE, with its almost unlimited financial capacities, have very great ambitions in this area. The successful launch of “Al-Amal” is the first step in a very long-term project worthy of a science fiction scenario: the creation within a century of a human colony on Mars.
With this in mind, the Emirates plan to create a scientific city in the desert surrounding the principality of Dubai, where living conditions on the Red Planet would be simulated as realistically as possible, for training purposes.
The political capital of the UAE, Abu Dhabi has conceded to its neighbor Dubai the conduct of the UAE space program. The Al-Amal probe was imagined in this emirate, within the Mohammed Ben Rachid Space Center, a center named in honor of the local sheikh, Mohammed Ben Rachid Al-Maktoum.
The latter, along with Mohammed Ben Zayed Al-Nahyan, crown prince of Abu Dhabi and de facto regent of the Emirates, enthusiastically applauded the start of the Martian adventure. This event, which swells with pride throughout the country, is presented by the authorities as a way of reconnecting with the golden age of Islam. Between the VIIIe and XIIe century, Arab scholars, calculators of the diameter of the earth, had been the pioneers of astronomical research.
You have 7.18% of this article to read. The suite is reserved for subscribers.
