“The first lunch was a meeting” UAE international students from Korea achieve a miracle of’exploration to Mars’

Three space probes made by three different countries arrived on Mars side by side between the 10th and 19th of last month. The first spacecraft was the UAE Mars rover’Amal’. ‘Amal’, which means hope in Korean, entered Mars orbit at 12:57 am on the 10th. The Chinese rover’Tianyuan 1’entered Mars orbit, and the US NASA (NASA) Mars rover’Perserverence’ also landed on the surface of Mars.

One of the surprising news about the success of the Mars exploration project is the fact that the UAE is sandwiched between great powers such as the United States and China. How the UAE, a small country with a population of 9.89 million (estimated in 2020) and only 83% of South Korea’s area, was able to successfully carry out the Mars exploration project.

Listen to the words of the UAE Vice President and Prime Minister Mohamed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Dubai monarch. “My grandfather rode a camel. But I ride a Benz. My son rides a Land Rover, but his grandson may ride a camel again.” They feared that if oil was depleted, national competitiveness would collapse in an instant. In particular, he was concerned that the young generation of the UAE, who will be responsible for the future, will have a comfortable attitude without a sense of challenge.

Mohammed bin Rashid tried to overcome this with the challenge of the impossible. That is why the UAE is working on space development. He said at the ceremony for the 48th anniversary of the founding of the country in 2019, “Just as the founding fathers have constantly instilled a sense of challenge so that they can use all of our potential to cope with the changes in the world, so we will continue to show the future to the younger generation.” He founded the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center (MBRSC) named after him in 2006, shortly after the inauguration of Dubai monarch and UAE Prime Minister, and began developing space.

However, at the time, the UAE was not a space scientist, but a wasteland of space science with no infrastructure. The first space development project was the development of a small satellite with relatively low difficulty. At the time, the UAE was concerned about the world’s three largest small-satellite companies, SSTL from Surrey University in England, Airbus from the European Union, and Setrak Eye from Korea. (Now Airbus has acquired SSTL.)

After contemplating, the UAE selected Korea as the first teacher of space development.

Korea was also a satellite barren land until the 1980s. In 1989, the late Soon-Dal Choi, an emeritus professor at KAIST, sent 20 students to study abroad at the University of Surrey, UK, and the University of London, which are advanced satellite countries. The students returned and launched Korea’s first artificial satellite,’Uribyul No. 1’in 1992. Students founded the satellite venture Setrec Eye in 1999 and raised it as a world-class company.

The UAE wanted to learn satellite technology and absorb the technology, know-how, and culture of Korea, which achieved full independence. Omran Sharaf, who studied in Korea as an international student in 2006, and is now the head of the Mars exploration project, said in a local interview, “Korea was the best place for technology transfer when reviewing all options. It was because I brought it and became self-reliant.”

About 10 UAE international students have studied not only satellite technology but also project processes and scientific administration at Setrec I for 8 to 10 years since 2006. Two years of them studied at KAIST and received a master’s degree. Suhail Al Meiri, who was an international student at the time, (Head of Spaceship Development Team, Mars Probe Project), “I ate sashimi for my first lunch, but it was my first time to eat it, so I was really shocked. After that, whatever I ate, it didn’t matter at all.”

They successfully launched DubaiSat 1 in 2009, DubaiSat 2 in 2013, and Khalifasat in 2018. Before completing one project, I learned the skills at the speed of moving on to the next project. Khalifasat was launched with 100% proprietary technology.

At the end of 2013, at the end of life in Korea, Prime Minister Mohamed bin Rashid made a direct call to Sharaf. It was an order to complete the Mars exploration project by 2021, the 50th anniversary of the founding of the country. “Going to Mars is a lot more complicated than launching a satellite on Earth,” Sharaf said. Even countries that have historically been technically perfect have failed half of their Mars exploration plans.” But the Prime Minister’s will was firm.

Prime Minister Mohamed bin Rashid announced to the world in July 2014 that he would send a probe to Mars and established the UAE Space Agency in September. The Department of Basic Science was also established at the local university to supply human resources. First, an unprecedented reckless challenge began in the history of space development, where the goal was announced and preparations started.

The world’s scientific community has predicted that the UAE’s potential to achieve its goals is very low. This is because it is virtually impossible for an upstart country in the space industry with only satellite technology to send a rover to another planet within 10 years. Setting a satellite in the Earth’s orbit over tens of thousands of kilometers is different from having to fly hundreds of millions of kilometers through outer space and accurately enter the orbit of a planet.

At that time, the UAE Mars exploration project was about 70 people (currently about 200 people). The total supervisor was 30 years old, and the overall average age was 27 years. Of the total workforce of the project, 34% were women, and 80% of the scientific workforce were women. None of the human resources had ever experienced an interplanetary space exploration project.

Young people who studied abroad in Korea headed to the United States in 2014, this time. The Mars exploration project was started at Arizona State University and the University of California at Berkeley, centering on the Institute of Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, where NASA scientists are studying. Prime Minister Mohamed bin Rashid said, “Don’t think you’re buying technology with money, you will surely raise the technology to a level that you can develop on your own.”

NASA’s tough and challenging culture and the passion of the UAE youth matched well. Brett Landin, a veteran engineer from NASA who led the UAE youth at the time, said in an interview with the science journal’Nature’, “Working with UAE young people was the most thrilling experience in my life.”

Young UAE scientists also attended an international forum led by NASA analyzing Mars exploration programs. At the time, NASA was also preparing for a robotic exploration of the Mars surface, so the UAE could benefit from a diverse group of scientists. UAE space scientist Patma Ruta, who attended the forum at the time, recalled, “At first people looked at me wearing a hijab strangely. But as we proceeded with the research, scientists also began to recognize our scientists.”

After seven years of hard work, the UAE launched the Mars probe’Amal’ from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Center in July 2020, as Prime Minister Mohamed bin Rashid declared. The launch vehicle equipped with Amal was a rocket H2A manufactured by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Japan. The UAE did not develop a projectile, considering it would be economical to use a projectile that had already been developed.

Finally, on February 10th, Amal successfully entered Mars orbit. As the original goal, the Mars exploration project was successful before December 2nd, the anniversary of its founding. It is the fifth largest record in the world after the United States, the former Soviet Union, Europe, and India.

The goal of the UAE Mars Exploration Project is to complete a weather and climate map by observing the entire Mars atmosphere for 687 days, a year on Mars. The probe carries ultra-precise scientific equipment such as a high-resolution multi-band camera, ultraviolet spectrometer, and thermal infrared spectrometer, and travels in an elliptical orbit of the shortest 20,000 km above Mars and the longest 43,000 km.

The UAE’s dream does not stop here. Already in 2017, Prime Minister Mohamed bin Rashid proposed a vision to “build a city the size of Chicago on Mars in 2117, 100 years later.”

To this end, it plans to invest $136 million (about 156 billion won) to create a dome-shaped structure that reproduces Mars on 180,000 square meters of desert. With the Martian temperature, air pressure, gravity, and soil intact, the research team lives for one year to test the viability of humans and plants.

Reporter Jeongbong Lee [email protected]