Senior engineer Muna Al Hammadi discusses plans with other engineers in one of The Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre laboratories. (Natalie Naccache for Nature)
How the UAE built a Mars mission
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) plans to launch its Mars-orbiter mission sometime during a three-week window starting on 15 July. It’s been a mere six years since the nation announced the project, which it hopes will help to transform its oil economy into a knowledge economy. Fundamental to the mission was tapping the expertise of seasoned US engineers, who helped to build the craft and train their UAE counterparts. The mission’s Emirati team personifies the aspiring scientists that the project hopes to inspire: at its outset, the average age of the engineers was 27, and women make up 80% of its scientists. If the UAE can pull off that economic transformation, it would be an even greater prize than getting to Mars, says Sarah Al Amiri, the science lead for the project and the country’s minister for advanced sciences. “How we get there is even more important,” she says.
Nature | 13 min read
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