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While Oscar nominated film “Hidden Figures” tells the story of women who helped America into space over 50 years ago, some very modern women in Dubai are currently launching a mission to Mars.
Spearheading the $20 billion Emirates Mars Mission is Sara Al Amiri, science leader of the project to develop a probe to send to the red planet in 2020 to collect scientific data.
Speaking to ENTITY, she said, “Thirty percent of the people in our space program are women – so our females are not hidden figures.
“When you consider that NASA is, I think, 14 percent female, that’s a great indicator of the importance of women to the science and technology sector here.”
Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, spoke with pride about the rise of women in his region while addressing the World Government Summit.
“One woman is worth one thousand men,” he declared at the Dubai gathering of global politicians and influencers.
“We consider women to be very important. Here in the United Arab Emirates, 75 percent of our university graduates are women and one third of federal government employees are female.”
One of the biggest success stories is Sara Al Amiri, who comes to the space program from a background in computer engineering.
Speaking about her work on the Mars project, she added, “Everything about it is a challenge. We create the flight module, we test it at the different temperature ranges it will face on the journey and we plan to launch in 2020.”
Space is a young person’s game in her part of the world. Sara is in her twenties and so is everyone else working on the project.
The millennials won’t be going to Mars themselves as this is just a probe mission designed to compliment other international projects paving the way for eventual human colonization of the red planet. But the United Arab Emirates will continue in the space business after this initial effort.
“Space assets are important for any country and offer the chance to further its development,” said Sara.
