Astronaut praises UAE space industry

Julie Payette, a former chief astronaut with the Canadian Space Agency and advocate of grassroots education in space science, has hailed 'The National’s Space Programme'.

Canadian astronaut Julie Payette, front, at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida before her 2009 trip into space. Chris O’Meara / AP Photo

ABU DHABI // Julie Payette, a former chief astronaut with the Canadian Space Agency who now works to advocate for grass roots education in space science, hailed space programmes by the UAE and The National.

“The UAE is already doing some ventures. That’s a great way to inspire people. Have contests where they will participate, develop and experiment, and also have partnerships between the colleges, universities and young people,” she said.

“When they are between the age of 10 and 14, pair those people with people from faculties of engineering and aerospace,” said Ms Payette, who travelled into space in 1999 and 2009, spending more than 25 days there.

“You can learn at any age, but when you are young you are like a sponge and when you are introduced to more different types of things before the age of seven and eight, then you get fastened by that,” Ms Payette said.

She was speaking on the sidelines of the second International Civil Aviation Organisation and United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs symposium in Abu Dhabi yesterday.

The National Space Programme was launched in partnership with this newspaper, the UAE Space Agency and Boeing in November last year.

It consists of the Genes in Space contest that challenges high school pupils to create a DNA analysis experiment to be carried out in space, and a planned launch project in which a university team will build a satellite.

The winners of each competition will be flown to the US to watch their projects being launched into space. Ms Payette praised The National’s efforts to get youngsters interested.

“Young kids get motivated by everything, if they see a great dancer some of them would want to become a dancer. If they see a great soccer player they want to become a soccer player.

“If you want more kids to become engineers in space, travellers and pilots, then you have to expose them to those types of careers,” she said.

She said it was important for the UAE to encourage children to study science-based subjects.

Ms Payette, who runs the Montreal Science Centre, said she believed there should be a national science centre built in Abu Dhabi. She said a planetarium in the UAE would help peopleto understand the universe.

“The weather of the UAE is phenomenal, very nice and clear. You can put the planetarium more in the desert and you will see everything,” she said. “It’s great to understand who we are and where we are placed in the universe,” the astronaut said.

Ms Payette will be speaking at the conference in Abu Dhabi tomorrow on the “next generation of aerospace professionals”.

She believed there would soon be many commercial ventures into space. “We are not there yet, we are still developing space procedures, test line vehicles,” Ms Payette said. “When it starts then we would need more and more people to work in that industry.”

So motivating, training and recruiting people is the solution, she said.