DUBAI: All the UAE’s space projects are gearing toward humanity becoming a multiplanetary species, Salem Al-Marri, director-general of the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Center, told the World Governments Summit on Wednesday.
Speaking to Arab News, Al-Marri discussed the UAE’s partnership with the Saudi space mission.
“Having our (Saudi Arabia and the UAE) astronauts in space at the same time is the first time we had that many Arabs in space at one time,” he said.
Al-Marri said he hoped to have the two countries work together more extensively and share resources to further develop the Arab space industry.
“We’d love to have our astronauts visit Saudi along with the Saudi astronauts, Rayyanah Barnawi and Ali Al-Qarni, have some joint outreach activities and really take it from there. I think also from the research perspective, the data, the outreach, we are now working on different projects that we will announce soon,” he added.
But Al-Marri jokingly revealed that he, personally, was not ready to relocate to Mars, even if the opportunity were to come up tomorrow.
“Not in my lifetime, no. If there’s a return ticket then yes, if it’s a visit for a couple of years and coming back, I would do that. But I think within the next decade we would see some sort of human presence on Mars for a quick type of mission,” he said.
“The global exploration roadmap is moving towards trying to get a permanent presence on the moon and around the moon, and then using that to go to Mars,” he said.
In a panel discussion with Salem Butti Al-Qubaisi, director-general of the UAE Space Agency, the directors discussed UAE’s space missions and progress since the UAE space mission to Mars was announced in 2014.
“We see a big benefit of having these astronauts sent into space, performing hundreds of experiments, which benefit us here on the ground,” Al-Marri said.
When asked if the UAE’s scarcity of water in any way limited the space mission, both directors said it served as motivation for the project to go further.
“One of the main objectives of the space mission is to help understand water. We can see if there are other sources of water available. If we are planning to go deeper into space we must ensure that there are adequate resources out there,” Al-Qubaisi said.
Al-Marri said MBRSC’s goal and motivation was to see an Emirati on the moon in the next 10 years.
The UAE Astronaut Program was launched in 2017 by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum, the vice president and prime minister of the UAE, and Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, who was deputy supreme commander of the UAE Armed Forces at the time and is now the UAE president.
Sultan Al-Neyadi was the first Emarati and Arab astronaut to undertake a long-term space mission and the first to complete a spacewalk.
Al-Neyadi, together with NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, were part of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-6 that lifted off on March 2, 2023 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The crew conducted more than 200 science experiments and technology demonstrations during their stay at the space station and returned to earth on Sept. 4, 2023.
