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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.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by cykros on Thursday July 17 2014, @03:40PM
I gotta say, all this UAE = allahu akbar stuff is a little weird. Say UAE and my first thought goes to Dubai...hardly a bastion of religious extremism (unless we're calling Capitalism a religion now).
(Score: 2, Informative) by sqrt(-1) on Thursday July 17 2014, @04:39PM