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UAE Plans to Send First Arab Spaceship to Mars by 2021

posted by janrinok on Thursday July 17 2014, @01:15PM   Printer-friendly
from the good-luck-with-that-voyage dept.

AnonTechie writes:

At a time when space exploration has become a competition between world powers, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) plans to send an unmanned probe to Mars by 2021, which will be the Arab world's first mission to another planet.

A new UAE Space Agency will be created to coordinate the UAE's growing space technology sector and to supervise the mission. The mission will be led by Emiratis and will expand the nation's human capital through knowledge transfer from international partners, as well as increasing human knowledge about space exploration and distant planets.

"The UAE Mars probe represents 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," UAE President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan said in a statement Wednesday.

Do you think this is likely? I do not know of any country which was able to launch such missions in only 7 years.

 
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  • (Score: 1) by Lemming on Thursday July 17 2014, @02:45PM

    by Lemming (1053) on Thursday July 17 2014, @02:45PM (#70277)

    Of course, an argument could be made that NASA's efforts to put a man on the moon were largely pointless, because they never followed it up with anything long-term. No moonbases, no asteroid mining, the US just kind of got bored and wandered off, leaving the technology and know-how to rot.

    The Apollo missions brought us a lot of technology and know-how which is usable not only in future space missions, but also in our daily life. For example, the Apollo program pushed the development of computers and microchips.

    Some links:
    http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9135690/NASA_s_Apollo_technology_has_changed_history [computerworld.com]
    http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/80660main_ApolloFS.pdf [nasa.gov]

  • (Score: 2) by khallow on Thursday July 17 2014, @05:51PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday July 17 2014, @05:51PM (#70366) Journal

    Integrated circuits and microchips would have been pushed anyway even if the federal government had done absolutely nothing. (And where's the word about the far bigger contribution from the US military?) Banks for example were huge early adopters.