The UAE’s Mars mission seeks to bring Hope to more places than the red planet
On July 14, a new Mars-bound spacecraft will launch from Japan. While several Mars missions are planned to launch over the next month, what makes this different is who’s launching it: the United Arab Emirates.
Though new to space exploration, the UAE has set high goals for the probe, named Hope. The mission aims to further study the climate of Mars, but Omran Sharaf, mission lead, also says, “It’s a means for a bigger goal: to expedite the development in our educational sector, academic sector.”
With space exploration usually pursued by actors like the United States, Russia, China, the European Space Agency and more recently, India, Hope will be the first mission to the red planet from a Middle Eastern country. As a space policy expert, I believe Hope is also significant in two other way...