A look at the United Arab Emirates’ space sector

BY EMILIO COZZI

In the beginning, for the honor gained from historical primacy, were the cosmonauts, the space pilgrims of the Soviet Union. Shortly after, astronauts followed suit, as they were called already while being sought in 1959, the Americans who would venture beyond the atmosphere (and later Europeans). Today, the name of Chinese space adventurers, the taikonauts, is also well-known. The vymanauts will be worth discussing next January when India has promised to bring them into space for the first time aboard the Gaganyaan capsule, fresh from a successful test.
It’s more pressing to learn another space-related name: najmonaut, from najm (نجم), which means “star” in Arabic.

From the neologisms offered by the history of space exploration, in recent years, the rise of space enterprise from the Arabian Peninsula is undeniable. Particularly, that of the United Arab Emirates which has managed to go further, higher, and quicker than all the others in a short time and with an Olympic effort.

The country, which between November 13 and 17 will host the prestigious Dubai Airshow, did not have a space agency until 2014. Since then, it has sent two men beyond the sky: the first, Hazza Al Mansouri, stayed on the International Space Station for a week in 2019. The second, Sultan Al Neyadi, returned in early September from the first long-term stay of an Arab (six months, thanks to the agreement between the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center and the private American company Axiom) on the orbiting outpost, after also conducting the first historic extravehicular activity for a najmonaut.

The United Arab Emirates have rapidly progressed, with determination and a deployment of resources that speaks volumes about the federation’s extra-atmospheric ambitions. They have reached Mars, and now, after the failed attempt to land on the Moon aboard the Japanese iSpace mission, they aim for the asteroids. Like many others, they also envision a colony on the Red Planet. But they are the only ones, Elon Musk excluded, to officially declare a plausible date for an expedition: 2117. In the meantime, they aim to build a national space economy ecosystem capable of incubating local companies and hosting foreign ones. A sovereign fund has begun scouting.

Standing on the shoulders of giants
The first Emirati satellite reached its operational orbit in 2009. Dubaisat-1 was built in Korea, where Dubai engineers went as apprentices. Nine years later, KhalifaSat took off, an Earth observation apparatus entirely Made in UAE. In July 2020, atop the Japanese H-IIA launcher, the probe known in the West as “Hope” (Al-amal, hope), entered orbit around Mars seven months later to study its atmosphere. Hope was shaped in the laboratories of the University of Colorado in the United States, where Arabs worked elbow to elbow with those who are top of the class in Martian studies. Thanks to Hope, besides the analysis of the Martian atmosphere’s composition, some surprising images of Mars’s smaller moon, Deimos, were captured from just a hundred kilometers away.

Costing $200 million, Hope is the first interplanetary mission of an Arab state. The second is scheduled to launch in 2028 with a more distant destination: Ema, from Emirates Mission to the Asteroid Belt, will be the star of a “grand tour” of some of the celestial bodies orbiting in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. With an ending worthy of such a journey: the release of a lander on the surface of Justitia, an asteroid with peculiar characteristics that suggest it comes from the outer Solar System. Here too, the United Arab Emirates rely on international collaboration: the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder (USA), will be the main partner again, and the Italian Space Agency (ASI) will provide one of the imaging spectrometers.

Unlike Hope, this time more than 50% of the Agency’s investments must pay for the work of private companies based in the country. This is also where scouting has started to incubate new realities, to increase their solidity and international credibility (it is significant that presentations translated into various languages, including Italian, have been distributed worldwide). It’s no coincidence that the event held in June to promote the inventiveness of Emiratis and foreigners intending to collaborate on the federation’s space projects was called Space Means Business. The explicit goal is for the Emirates to become an attractive hub for anyone in the world with extra-atmospheric aspirations and projects.

Space means business
In July 2022, the government inaugurated a sovereign fund of $820 million. The first investment will be for a satellite constellation, Sirb (flock), with synthetic aperture radar for Earth observation. But the stated goal is to “actively encourage collaboration between international and local companies.” A milestone that the first successes suggest is achievable without excessive waiting.

Of course, the Emirates are a small player compared to the space giants: with nine million inhabitants, they have a GDP five times lower than Italy’s. Yet, aware of the returns on space investment – with multipliers ranging from three to ten for every euro invested – the UAE increasingly focuses on the sector. A significant element also in terms of international politics, considering the federation’s weight and the strategic importance of its oil fields. The country is trying to free itself from this dependency. It is in this context of a progressive paradigm shift that space for the Emirates represents one of the most profitable opportunities to seize, acting as a catalyst for technological and scientific innovation, growing economies (direct and indirect), political prestige, and diplomatic capacity.

In the context of space diplomacy, a final consideration related to the Moon should be added: the Emirates have signed up for both the Chinese program (in collaboration with Russia) to build a base at the lunar South Pole and the American Artemis Accords. Far from straddling two camps, it’s their will not to be ensnared in a competition that risks reproducing, if not exacerbating, the confrontation between two blocks, Western and Eastern. As noted by space geopolitics expert Marcello Spagnulo, “their equidistance – for instance, having conducted experiments on the Chinese space station – shows how they see their participation in these operations differently from Europeans. For us, it means taking sides, for them, it’s about acquiring knowledge, and it’s not said that if they cooperate with the West, they exclude doing so with others. They do not feel bound.”
Indeed, to only consider a Western democratic bloc (United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, Japan, etc.) and a Sino-Russian bloc would ignore or underestimate the markets in the Indo-Pacific, South America, and Africa that are in play and eager to find their alliances.
Just like Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Egypt, Kenya, and India (which, while waiting for the vymanauts, landed its Chandrayaan-3 probe on the Moon on August 23, becoming the fourth nation in the world with a physical presence on our natural satellite), the United Arab Emirates only reaffirm their interest in being part of the Western and Chinese ecosystems. Because, should geopolitical tensions between the United States and China increase, it’s not excluded that we could witness the formation of a third pole or the model of collaboration with both parties, of which the Emirates is de facto a pioneer.

The Emirati human spaceflight program was born in 2017. In six years, the UAE has demonstrated that it knows how to “stand on the shoulders of giants” and has shown long-term strategic visions. They have given themselves 100 years to establish a settlement on Mars. It is the only secular space program. There have been no grandiose announcements, nor hopes diminished by reality. On the website of the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (the Dubai space entity, one of the seven emirates, and responsible, among other things, for the Hope mission), the horizon is outlined: that of a colony on the Red Planet, starting now with the recruitment of technological startups. There’s a form to fill out to submit collaboration proposals. They can be just simple ideas, with very low maturity, seeds to be nurtured. It would be worth observing their harvest: as lovers of (science) fiction, but also space engineers know well, 2117 is not that far away.