By 
May 24th, 2015
Credit: Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre
The United Arab Emirates’ UAE Space Agency will launch its official strategy and operational plan in Abu Dhabi on May 25.
The strategy puts in motion developing the space sector, creating space policy and regulation, and directing national space programs that will benefit the UAE’s economy and develop human capital.
Credit: UAE Space Agency
Also to be staged in Abu Dhabi is a Global Space and Satellite Forum, to be held May 26-27. That event is hosted by the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center with the endorsement of the UAE Space Agency and aims to gather key regional and international stakeholders and decision makers from the space and satellite industry.
A major element of UAE Space Agency is to send a robotic space probe – called “Hope” — to Mars by 2021- the UAE’s 50th anniversary.
The UAE government has already invested 5.4 billion U.S. dollars in space technologies, and about 150 Emirati scientists and engineers will participate in the mission.
Science at Mars
The probe will create mankind’s first integrated model of the Red Planet’s atmosphere. The spacecraft will collect and send back to earth over 1,000 gigabytes of new Mars data. This information will be received in the Science Data Centre in the UAE through different ground stations spread around the world.
The spacecraft will carry to the Red Planet a suite of science Instruments:
— Imager: a digital camera that sends back high-resolution color images
— Infrared Spectrometer: to examine temperature patterns, ice, water vapor and dust in the Martian atmosphere
— Ultraviolet Spectrometer: to study Mars’ upper atmosphere and traces of oxygen and hydrogen further out into space.
Strategic partnership
In a related development, France and the UAE, the UAE Space Agency and the Centre National d’EtudesSpatiales, (the National Centre of Space Studies of France) also known as CNES, recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to create a strategic space partnership between the two entities.
Credit: Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre
The agreement represents the UAE Space Agency’s first international Memorandum of Understanding with a foreign agency for partnership and cooperation in space.
For an informative video regarding the UAE Space Agency’s Mars mission, go to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHen3W3g0K0#t=22
Also, go to this special website:
Posted in Space News
