Abu Dhabi: The United Arab Emirates on Monday laid out a strategic framework for a newly created space agency that aims to integrate various arms of the Gulf federation's burgeoning space industry.
The seven-state federation, perhaps best known for its oil wealth and extravagant attractions like Dubai's palm-shaped islands and the record-breaking Burj Khalifa skyscraper, is fast establishing itself as the Arab world's leader in the space sector.
The UAE Space Agency, created last year by presidential decree, aims to regulate and support the industry, which includes existing Earth-orbiting satellite programs and plans for a mission to Mars in 2020.
Agency Chairman Khalifa Mohammed Thani al-Rumaithi said the space industry will help diversify the country's economy and create highly skilled jobs for a growing youth population.
"The United Arab Emirates is seeking to confirm its status as a spacefaring nation," he told a gathering at an event rolling out the federal body in the capital, Abu Dhabi, that featured models of Emirati satellites and waiters serving space-themed canapés, like hummus in metal squeeze tubes.
Space technology is one of several high-tech industries the OPEC member is championing as a way to broaden an economy still heavily dependent on oil.
Thuraya, an Emirates-based satellite phone operator, was responsible for the country's first commercial satellite, launched in 2000.
The Emirates' first government-backed satellite, an Earth-observation satellite known as DubaiSat-1, blasted into orbit atop a Russian rocket launched from Kazakhstan in 2009.
It and the follow-up DubaiSat-2 were collaborations between Emirati engineers and a South Korean satellite firm.
Abu Dhabi's Al Yah Satellite Communications Co., better known as Yahsat, hopes to put its third satellite into orbit in 2016. Its first communications satellite was launched aboard an Arianespace rocket from French Guiana in 2011.
Among the initiatives outlined Monday were plans for an academic space program involving Yahsat, Abu Dhabi's Masdar Institute and US aerospace firm Orbital ATK, as well as the establishment of a space research center.
Earlier this month, the Dubai-based team behind the Emirati mission to Mars announced that its probe will circle the planet studying its atmosphere, including changes over time and how surface features such as volcanoes, deserts and canyons affect it.
Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum said earlier this month that he hoped the probe, named "Hope," would provide inspiration for the Arab world. It is the first Mars mission being attempted by any Arab country. Some 75 Emirati engineers are currently working on the Mars project, and officials hope to double that number by 2020.
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