‘FUTURE IS ABOUT CAPITALISING ON KNOWLEDGE OF HUMANITY’
Minister of State for Advanced Sciences opens the door to tomorrow’s UAE – and tomorrow’s world – in a conference for global thought leaders, scientists, entrepreneurs and financiers
The UAE’s Mission to Mars will contribute to scientific knowledge and inspire the next generation, says Sarah Al Amiri, Minister of State for Advanced Sciences.
The minister, one of the youngest in the Cabinet when she was appointed last October, was the opening speaker at The National Future Forum in Abu Dhabi.
Her responsibilities include the 2020 space probe to Mars, which she called “an adventure into the future of science and technology for this nation”. It will be the first for an Arab country.
The project is “a development for the UAE not only to settle Mars, not for the significance contribution that science, but more importantly for the development of the UAE”.
Ms Al Amiri told the audience at Manarat Al Saadiyat that the experience of other nations seeking to travel to Mars showed there was a huge risk of failure.
“It is such a monumental and challenging project that has a lot of risks, and the risk is that only 50 per cent of projects that get to Mars succeed,” she said.
“That is a large risk that the Government is willing to take on, but it is also willing to bestow it on a group of young, enthusiastic and experienced engineers and experts.”
The Emirates Mars Mission will send an orbiting probe to Mars in 2020, to examine the planet’s atmosphere and look for evidence of water, sending back “data that science has never had before, that no mission has ever been able to capture”, Ms Al Amiri said.
It is being built by a “brilliant” team, the members of which are all below the age of 35, and has drawn from the experience of earlier international Mars missions to cut development time by half.
It is now barely two years to the planned launch on July 14, 2020, Ms Al Amiri said.
“This mission is on schedule,” she said. “There are absolutely no delays so far and we actually see bits and pieces of the spacecraft coming together at a very fast speed.
“Hopefully we are going to have the launch in Japan towards Mars to reach there at the beginning of 2021, with valuable scientific data being sent out to the public without any restraints whatsoever, by the UAE’s 50th anniversary in 2021.
“The future is about the youth and it is about engaging them. More importantly, we all as a nation have a passion for exploration, for continued development, for continuously pushing the boundaries.
“The future is about capitalising on the knowledge of humanity, of further developing on it, of further expanding on it and pushing the boundaries better and in a shorter amount of time.
“The future is also about being global citizens with an impact within and beyond borders. With this wide lens we are looking at not just the future of the nation of the UAE, but of this world.”
In a wide-ranging series of discussions, guest speakers touched on the rise of drones to carry passengers and manage commercial deliveries, the need for affordable housing and super-fast passenger travel.
Leading Hong Kong architect James Law spoke of the need for “mega-architecture”,
where thousands of people live and work effectively using fewer resources in a more compressed city.
Neuroscientist Olivier Oullier, president of Emotiv, which develops devices that can be controlled by the mind by using a headset, spoke of the need to invest in low-cost technology that can monitor brain health.
MRI scanners costing millions of dirhams and weighing tonnes are being replaced by headsets that cost less than a games console and can scan the brain for medical problems.
The National’s Editorin-Chief, Mina Al-Oraibi, announced that six young Emiratis will join the media organisation as fellows.
They will gain in-depth knowledge of the media industry at seminars by high-level experts.
Cheap headsets will replace MRI scanners costing millions