Bahrain boldly going into space, with the help of the UAE

UAE Space Agency seals deal with fellow Middle East country to share knowledge and expertise

Dr Ahmad Belhoul Al Falasi, Minister of State for Higher Education and Advanced Skills and Chairman of the UAE Space Agency, agrees a new Middle East space partnership with Kamal Bin Ahmed Mohammed, Minister of Transportation and Telecommunications for Bahrain.

The National

Nov 17, 2018

The UAE Space Agency is helping Bahrain boldly go where it has never gone before - as the country prepares to launch its first satellite into orbit.

The UAE has been successfully reaching for the stars during a momentous few months, with MySAT-1, a small cube-shaped satellite built by students at Khalifa University, sent soaring into the skies on Saturday.

The launch from Virginia in the United States came just weeks after the first-ever Emirati-designed, KhalifaSat, was launched from Japan.

The ambitious UAE space agency is also set to send the first Emirati astronaut onto the International Space Station next April, while lofty plans for a Mars probe continue to gather pace.

Now the UAE Space Agency has made an agreement with Bahrain's National Space Science Agency and the UAE’s Khalifa University, to complete the training of the Bahrain Space Team and help them complete their own dreams of galactic exploration.

The deal was sealed by Dr Ahmad Belhoul Al Falasi, Minister of State for Higher Education and Advanced Skills and Chairman of the UAE Space Agency and Kamal Bin Ahmed Mohammed, Minister of Transportation and Telecommunications and the man responsible for overseeing Bahrain's space agency.

The partnership will see the two parties collaborate in training the Bahrain Space Team in satellite technology, design, construction, testing, launching, operations, and control, in addition to co-operating to build a CubeSat to be used for scientific research, and carrying out a number of environmental studies.

Dr Al Falasi said the two countries already work in tandem in political, economic, social and cultural fields - and now they can add space into the mix.

____________

First satellite built at Abu Dhabi lab heads to International Space Station

Yahsat to launch third satellite in January and expand into Brazil

Exclusive: Yahsat's new satellite to service mobility and Internet of Things, driving growth

____________

“The signing of this declaration is a tangible result of the close relationship between the UAE and Bahrain in the arena of advanced sciences and will see us working together as strategic partners in the region’s nascent but rapidly developing space sector,” said Dr Al Falasi.

“The ties between our two nations already extend across the political, economic, social, and cultural domains and we have now added the exciting field of space to that inventory.

“The UAE space sector has reached an advanced stage that now sees it able to transfer knowledge to valued partners in the region. Our growing expertise in the field of space science, research, exploration and telecommunications is exemplified by the number of ambitious space programs and initiatives launched by the UAE.

“These include the UAE Astronaut Program, the Emirates Mars Mission’s Hope Probe project, Mars Scientific City and last month’s placing in orbit of KhalifaSat – an advanced piece of sophisticated technology that was designed and built entirely by Emirati engineers.”