(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) The UAE Space Agency is talking to scientists, academia and other interest groups to finalise what it can best achieve for mankind from its proposed Mars mission to be sent in 2021.
The UAE revealed its ambitious Mars mission in October last year, when His Highness Shaikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and the Ruler of Dubai, announced the seven- year mission to the Red Planet, in a tweet.
The space exploration programme is the first by an Arab, Islamic country and it will coincide with the 50th anniversary of the nation.
"With pride, we took practical steps towards launching the first Arab mission to Mars," tweeted Shaikh Mohammed, at the time of the launch in October last year.
"The sky's the limit for our ambitions but that requires a team determined enough to attain this," he said.
The UAE Space Agency's director-general Dr. Mohammed Al Ahbabi, in its first media encounter, shared a brief update on the space programme and its future course of direction.
An ICT professional with 20 years of experience in the UAE's telecommunication and satellite companies, the director-general said that the UAE Mars mission is in its very early stages, where deliberations are going on with scientists, academia and other institutions to sort out what scientific questions or science mission, it needs to validate.
"We're trying to validate the concept of the science mission," he said. The Agency wants to find out what are the best sensors that can be sent into the Red Planet to collect scientific data that will benefit mankind.
"We don't want to duplicate what other Mars missions tried to probe. The idea is to figure out the problems on the planet so that the mission is designed accordingly and the data collected from there is analysed."
The scientific community world over has long been curious to fully know the Red Planet, its composition, existence of life and several other questions. There are people who are preparing to travel there, as well.
The US National Space Agency first sent its mission to the planet on November 4, 1964 and since then it has sent ten missions; six missions are currently exploring the planet while work is in progress on two more spacecraft. India is the latest country, which sent its spacecraft into the orbit in September last year.
The head of the UAE Space Agency, who early this month visited the space agencies, universities and research and development agencies in Europe, said: "We're talking to different R&D institutions on the mission as there are so many questions about Mars"
He said: "You need to know why you're going there, what are your objectives and is it worth it?"
The space ship will be designed according to the scientific data collected and validated, he said.
Asked when the scientific agenda will be finalised, Dr. Al Ahbabi said, it may take 2 to 3 years.
After that the space ship will be designed, built, tested, and send into the space and then the data will start coming in from there.
Abu Dhabi's Al Yahsat has sent two satellites for military and telecommunication purposes, while it has mandated for the third one.
Dubai's Emirates Institution for Advanced Science and Technology has sent its first space craft called Dubai1 into orbit. The agency is planning two more satellites in the coming years.
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