‘Epic challenge’ will see the UAE aim for the stars

The UAE will send a mission to Mars, but doing so will inspire the country, the region and the world – but it also shows the growing aerospace skills that have been developed here.

An image of Mars taken from the Hubble Space Telescope. NASA / AP

Countries need "epic challenges", as Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid put it, and that is certainly what the UAE is taking on by announcing that it will send an unmanned probe to Mars in 2021 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of federation. Even for a country that has become a byword for making ambitious plans and then bringing them to fruition, this is breathtaking in its scope.

Sheikh Khalifa, President of the UAE, called it “the Islamic world’s entry into the era of space exploration. We will prove that we are capable of delivering new scientific contributions to humanity.”

For all the inspirational rhetoric, this is also a scheme firmly grounded in reality. The UAE had already spent Dh20 billion in space technology before this latest venture was announced. This includes the Al Yah satellite used for television broadcasts, the Thuraya satellite for telecommunications and Dubai Sat, whose second satellite was launched in November last year.

Aerospace engineering is also one of the key directions in which the country is specialising to diversify the economy away from extractive industries and as part of a broader scheme to provide highly-skilled and high-paying jobs for Emiratis.

This includes Mubadala Aerospace’s manufacturing facility in Al Ain. Abu Dhabi Polytechnic already offers diplomas in aircraft engineering and aviation maintenance technologies at its Al Ain campus.

Rather than the Mars probe being a new direction for the UAE, it will build on capacity that already exists, leaving behind a better trained and more experienced workforce.

Even with a logical basis underpinning the space programme, rhetoric also has a role to play. With the Middle East continuing to make global headlines for all the wrong reasons – whether it is the carnage in Gaza, the misery in Syria or the fundamentalism blighting Iraq – Sheikh Mohammed has been able to remind everyone that the Islamic world was once the centre of global civilisation and scientific endeavour and that those qualities still exist here.

And then there is the inspirational appeal of the “epic challenge,” as Sheikh Mohammed identified.

“The moment we stop taking on such challenges,” he said, “is the moment we stop moving forward.”