DUBAI: Dubai’s ruler on Wednesday launched the United Arab
Emirates’ first space programme aimed at sending four Emirati astronauts
to the International Space Station within five years.
“On
this day, a new chapter in our history begins with the launch of the
first UAE Astronaut Programme,” within the next five years, Sheikh
Mohammed bin Rashed Al-Maktoum, the UAE’s vice president and prime
minister, said in a statement.
“The people of the UAE will break barriers,” he said.
The
oil-rich Gulf nation has already announced ambitious plans to become
the first Arab country to send an unmanned probe to orbit Mars by 2021,
naming it “Hope”.
The astronaut programme would make it
one of only a handful of states in the Middle East to have sent a person
into space as it looks to make good on a pledge “to become global
leader in space exploration over the next 50 years”.
The first Arab in outer space was Saudi Arabia’s Sultan bin Salman Al-Saud, who flew on a US shuttle mission in 1985.
