Op-Ed by Naif Al Rogi, Staff Writer and Roa Daher, Staff Writer

February 13th, 2021

Back in the summer of 2020, in the throes of a global pandemic and as much of the world was trying to adapt to our new and isolated state of being, the United Arab Emirates launched the Emirates Mars Mission (EMM). The EMM is extremely significant for several reasons: it would provide the first complete picture of the Martian atmosphere, it would be the first Arab interplanetary mission, and it would arrive at Mars’ orbit in the 50th year since the unification of the UAE. The Hope Probe departed on a rocket from the Tanegashima island in Japan on July 20, and armed with a rocket to protect it from the Earth’s atmosphere it made its way to the Earth’s orbit, staying there until the two planets aligned. At the moment of alignment, it was reignited, allowing the Probe to resume its journey to Mars. Seven months later, on the night of February 9th and with a 50% chance of actually being successful, the Hope Probe miraculously entered the Martian orbit, thus making the EMM and the first ever interplanetary Arab mission a success in an otherwise bleak year.

Even though expats comprise a whopping 89% of the population, the team behind the UAE’s first trip to Marsconsisted entirely of Emirati engineers, scientists, and programmers below the age of 35. The significance of this mission in the realm of space travel cannot be understated; in line with the global effort to study Mars and achieve the goals of the Mars Exploration Program Advisory Group (MEPAG), the Hope Probe will collect data to help us understand the climate on Mars by studying the lower and upper atmospheres. In spite of the many impressive facts about the Hope Probe, including but not limited to the distance it travelled to reach Mars, its mission, and its success despite the obstacles, the most impressive thing about the Hope Probe is the time it was launched. In the middle of a global pandemic that changed the course of the decade and amidst the worst economic downturn the world has seen since the Great Depression, the Hope Probe was sent into space. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai and the Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE, said, “Our journey to space represents a message of hope to every Arab citizen that we have the innovation, resilience and efforts to compete with the greatest of nations in the race for knowledge. Hope Probe is an accomplishment for every Arab, a source of pride for every Emirati, and a path-breaking achievement for our engineers”. In fact, according to the Crown Prince of Dubai, Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the name ‘Hope’, or Al Amal in Arabic, was chosen to convey a message of positivity, and obviously hope, to young Arabs in spite of all the challenges that the past years presented.

“The Emirates fulfills the hopes of Arabs”, foreign minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed tweeted out after the Emirati Hope Probe successfully entered the Martian orbit on Tuesday, February 9th. The running slogan of this interplanetary enterprise has been “Arabs in Mars”, perhaps proving that Arabism is not an entirely spent political force. Indeed, the United Arab Emirates is leveraging its position in the Arab world as the “success story”; consider that young Arabs have repeatedly over the past nine years, when polled, chose the country as the place they would want to live in (notably ahead of Western nations). This mission is as much about soft power and global prestige as it is about scientific advancement—and by every measure, the Emirati strategy is working. There is the Islamic element too, though it is rather underplayed comparatively. The UAE hopes to counterweigh Turkish pan-Islamic aspirations by presenting an alternative model; no doubt with this at least partly in mind, Turkey’s President Edrogan unveiled his own space program the day after the Hope probe entered Mars’ orbit. Neighboring countries like Saudi Arabia have recently earmarked billions of dollars for space programs of their own, following in the example of the UAE. One would certainly welcome a regional space race, where cooperation is incentivized, over a fatalistic nuclear arms race that risks brewing. The room is open for healthier competition, and the peoples of the region are eager to look to the heavens above for that thing they are in desperate short supply of on the ground: hope.