The UAE's historic role in space exploration, highlighted by the success of the Hope mission to Mars, has been hailed by a leading French politician and academic as providing a far-reaching promise of discovery and learning.
Jack Lang, a former government minister and president of the Institute of the Arab World (IMA) in Paris, said the mission, along with the landing of Nasa’s Perseverance rover on Thursday, offered an “extraordinary range of opportunities” for the world.
Mr Lang, a long-standing friend of the UAE, said the Hope project had spurred a "burgeoning scientific awakening" in the country, clearly demonstrating its commitment to global cooperation on space flight.
He described his “absolute delight” on hearing the mission had reached the Red Planet. “This is a fantastic triumph for the UAE, marking a milestone for the country in the year of the 50th anniversary of its founding, and for the Arab world,” he said.
The achievement will be honoured in a proposed exhibition, “Objective Mars”, to be staged on the forecourt of the Paris institute in partnership with La Cite de l’Espace, France’s national space discovery museum in the southwestern city of Toulouse, centre of Europe’s aerospace industry.
With the centre currently closed by the Covid-19 pandemic, details are still to finalised.
The institute hopes for input from Arab countries in the exhibition and provisionally plans to run the event from June to October this year or March to September in 2022. IMA will also participate in a major fireworks display in honour of the UAE’s coming anniversary.
Mr Lang told The National: "The world's current excitement can be understood through the extraordinary range of opportunities the Red Planet opens, as well as through the information it might give mankind on the future and past of its own habitat, planet Earth."
He said Hope Probe made history by being the first Arab interplanetary mission to reach Mars.
“I believe Amal [meaning hope or expectation]to be a perfect name for this mission,” said Mr Lang, who served two spells each as France’s culture and education minister.
“It has given hope not only to Emirati people but also to all Arab youth by inspiring all young and talented engineers, scientists, analysts of the region. It is an incredibly ground-breaking change, which has a direct and positive impact on its youth’s thinking and perceptions, and paves new ways to realise even bigger projects and dreams.”
As well as broadening UAE’s horizons, turning it into a knowledge-exporting country as one of only five space nations to reach Mars, the mission delivered “a message of hope for our planet, its future discoveries on the environment and climate providing greater perspectives concerning Earth’s future and what can be done to ensure its resilience, development, and sustainability”.
He also welcomed the growing involvement of women in the UAE’s space programme, with five of the 14 remaining candidates to be the country’s next two astronauts being female.
“Looking at the people behind the mission to Mars, one notices that talent, innovation, and intelligence have no gender,” he said.
The “incredible mission” had been led by Sarah Al Amiri, Minister of State for Advanced Technology. Its discoveries would be studied and analysed by “other wonder women” such as Mariam Al Shamsi, instrument science lead, Hessa Al Matroushi, science data and analysis lead, and Heyam Al Baloushi, manufacturing, assembly, integration and test (MAIT) and quality assurance engineer.
“As a fervent advocate of women’s emancipation and empowerment, I am more than happy to know they had the chance to participate in such a wonderful project, mobilising all their talents,” Mr Lang said.
As The National reported following the success of the Hope mission, the UAE places a major focus on sex equality in the space industry as in other sectors. In contrast to male domination of space flight in many parts of the world, 42 per cent of staff at the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre in Dubai are women.