The project includes collaboration on a lunar space station and a mission to Mars…

Space, the final frontier, these are the voyages of the United Arab Emirates, its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds, and seek out new discoveries, boldly going where few have gone before.

This small step of borderline plagiarism may sound flippant, but it’s sincere and based on some genuinely huge leaps of achievement by the UAE’s Space Agency. The extra-terrestrial Emirati success story can be charted through the Hope Probe Mission to Mars, the Rashid Moon Rover, the return journeys of two separate Emirati astronauts (and counting), countless satellite launches, and the excitement of a future with both eyes very firmly set on a horizon beyond our own gravitational pull.

To the moon

The next big step in the UAE’s interstellar saga was announced on the social media accounts of H.H Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the UAE – H.H Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, on Sunday January 7, 2024.

It includes the country’s contribution to the Lunar Gateway, “which will serve as humanity’s first space station around the Moon” along with the United States, Canada, Japan, and the European Union.

Role models

Dubai’s ruler, H.H. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid added that the UAE’s role will include the requirement to build “a complete unit within the station weighing 10 tons”.  He also stated that a “space operations center will be established in the country” especially for the project, along with a UAE-based “global center for training astronauts”, which will provide training for “the first UAE astronaut to the moon”.

The lunar station isn’t primarily for exploration of the moon, ambitions stretch well beyond that. About 401 million kilometres in fact (that’s longer than doing the Dubai-Abu Dhabi commute three million times). The moon mission is a launch pad for missions to Mars… Manned missions to Mars. Upon which H.H. Sheikh Mohammed reflected “work will start immediately.. The Emirates will be part of this project, which represents one of the biggest ambitions of humans in space during the next decade”.

Images: X via @HHShkMohd