--- title: Middle East Mars Mission: It Could Happen description: A bold announcement by the United Arab Emirates is more than just an idle boast canonical: https://time.com/2994926/middle-east-mars-mission/ author: Michael Lemonick article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-07-17T10:00:38.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-21T09:11:31.415Z article:section: Science og:title: Middle East Mars Mission: Why Not? og:description: A bold announcement by the United Arab Emirates is more than just an idle boast og:url: https://time.com/2994926/middle-east-mars-mission/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt66ce5da844a49f91/69869c1e35ba6f9d4ac030d3/mars.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2761 og:image:height: 1553 og:image:alt: Mars og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Middle East Mars Mission: Why Not? twitter:description: A bold announcement by the United Arab Emirates is more than just an idle boast twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt66ce5da844a49f91/69869c1e35ba6f9d4ac030d3/mars.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # United Arab Emirates Says It Will Go To Mars By 2021 > Sponsored content. 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It reaches 40,000 subscribers with a 34.2% open rate and a 2.1% click rate as of August 2026. #### Where can I follow the energy transition as a business story? Future Proof covers climate and energy as an economic and business story rather than only an environmental one. It publishes every Friday and is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who writes Future Proof? Justin Worland, a senior correspondent at TIME and an award-winning climate journalist, writes Future Proof. #### Is Future Proof free? Yes. Future Proof is free at time.com/newsletters. by [Michael Lemonick](https://time.com/author/michael-d-lemonick/) ## Michael Lemonick Jul 17, 2014 10:00 AM UTC  Mars MarsDigital Vision/Getty Images by [Michael Lemonick](https://time.com/author/michael-d-lemonick/) ## Michael Lemonick Jul 17, 2014 10:00 AM UTC The big news out of the Middle East this week is mostly about war and other kinds of tribulation, as it was last week and probably will for weeks to come. War and tribulation, that is, plus a mission to Mars. [According to a report by Reuters,](http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/07/16/us-emirates-mars-idUKKBN0FL10G20140716) the United Arab Emirates announced it would be creating a space agency by 2021 and sending an umanned probe to the Red Planet—something only the U.S., the USSR/Russian Federation and the European Space Agency [have done with any success](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration%5Fof%5FMars#Totals), while the British, Japanese and Chinese have tried and failed. The jury is still out on an Indian probe, which is currently en route. So can they do it, or is this just some crazy stunt the UAE hopes nobody will remember when the time comes? The answer: it’s not necessarily crazy. True, the country has no aerospace industry, but a government-backed group based in the Persian Gulf country bought nearly a third of Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, a private space tourism company. Moreover, says John Logsdon, a space policy expert and professor emeritus at George Washington University, “The UAE has already been active in space with communications satellites and Earth observation satellites.” They’ve done this, he says, by purchasing both satellites and launch services from other countries, and they’d almost certainly put together a Mars probe the same way. “Most of the technical work and the launch would be contracted out,” he speculates, “but some of the components could be developed internally.” If that happened, and if UAE space agency engineers were in charge of mission control, he says, “they could appropriately claim that this mission was their own.” Given the UAE’s deep pockets, it’s certainly possible that the country could pull off such a project, which would bring a new kind of prestige to the region. The Arab world did invent algebra and enjoyed a golden age of science for centuries leading up to the Medieval period and many Arabs dream of the return to that kind of scientific ascendancy. Recent, eye-catching projects—including the successful construction of the [world’s tallest building ](http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2086522%5F2086523,00.html) and the [world’s largest indoor ski resort](http://content.time.com/time/travel/cityguide/article/0,31489,1849667%5F1876991%5F1876992,00.html)—hint at inventive potential. A Mars mission would obviously be a bit more ambitious, but in the end, it’s really just rocket science, which isn’t as complicated as we sometimes tend to think. Still, it’s one thing to say you’re going to do something like this and quite another to do it. After all, in 1969, NASA was similarly talking about our own manned mission to Mars—with astronauts aboard—in what was then the near future. It could be done, [said Wernher von Braun](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,901107,00.html), the rocket engineer behind that year’s successful Moon landing, by 1982. But it never happened, and who knows if it ever will? The UAE, aided by expertise from other countries, can certainly get a probe to Mars by 2021, in theory. 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