The Council's key responsibilities include forming policies for space security, managing critical infrastructure, promoting international alliances
space1 month ago
Space remains a shared resource for the world and the UAE continues to work with global communities to ensure that space is not politicised, said a senior official on Friday.
“As humanity, we cannot politicise space. Space will remain a shared resource. Access to space and being able to send spacecraft, especially to low Earth orbit, isn't a choice or glory project. We all use space data on a daily basis, which makes the overarching relevance of ensuring the growth of the sector, ensuring that the politics of Earth do not go into space, said Sarah bint Yousif Al Amiri, the UAE’s Minister of State for Public Education and Advanced Technology and Chairwoman of UAE Space Agency and the UAE Council of Scientists.
To address and highlight the issue of space being politicised, the Abu Dhabi Space Debate was held last year in the UAE capital.
“We will run into an access to space issue and sustainability of low Earth orbit of space that we need to cooperate in, especially with more and more spacecraft going into low earth orbit, which is where most of our assets need to be in. Cooperation creates a large drive for emerging space nations and also creates a large drive for private space… We continue to work together with the global communities to ensure that space is not politicised, the dialogue continues, mutual respect and transparency is also there within the space sector across countries and nations,” Al Amiri said during a briefing organised by The Arab Gulf States Institute.
She also highlighted that astronauts are going into space now from different countries.
The UAE will send its second astronaut Sultan AlNeyadi along with three other members of the Crew-6 to International Space Station on Monday for scientific explorations. The six-month mission will carry out a total of 250 research experiments, including 20 experiments by the UAE astronaut.
Al Amiri added that AlNeyadi “is a remarkable individual who has developed from the inception of the astronaut programme within the Emirates, trained up to par with global astronauts and today provides us a new venue for science and scientific discovery for the country by heading to the International Space Station.”
She also pointed out that the space sector is a hard, expensive and highly risky business.
“Designing spacecraft from the inception all the way till delivery, there’s a lot of risks associated, a lot of iterations on developments. So partnerships become important to be able to mitigate risks in some situations and be able to deliver on the overall outcomes and other situations. Space is hard and expensive. And you need to know that going into this, there will be failures. It's just the nature of the sector and you need to have the appetite for that,” she said during the discussion.
ALSO READ:
The Council's key responsibilities include forming policies for space security, managing critical infrastructure, promoting international alliances
space1 month ago
The Triangulum Galaxy is the third largest in our local group, right behind the Milky Way and Andromeda
space1 month ago
Time will tell, but it could be the 'brightest of the century', according to a Dubai-based expert
space1 month ago
The space rock is about the size of a bus and will orbit 4.5 million km away from Earth, unlike the Moon, which is 396,000 km away
space1 month ago
The nebula is called so because its shape resembles the helmet worn by the character 'Thor' in movies and novels
space2 months ago
Boeing's first astronaut mission ended earlier this month with its Starliner capsule returning to Earth while test pilots remained in space
space2 months ago
The spacewalk follows a daring first phase of the mission, during which the Dragon spacecraft reached a peak altitude of 1,400 kilometres
space2 months ago
On the mission's first day, they will soar to a peak altitude of 1,400 kilometres, before returning into a lower orbit
space2 months ago