UAE’s Global Space Challenge is Hunting Extraordinary Minds For a One Of A Kind Project
The United Arab Emirates this month launched a two million AED seed fund to bankroll researchers and projects pursuing the future of human space habitation, according to CNN. The Mohammed bin Rashid Space Settlement Challenge is seeking brilliant minds to explore and develop new business models for living and working in space.
Noah Raford, Chief Operating Officer, and Futurist-in-chief at the Dubai Future Foundation stated “It’s not just engineering solutions. We’re looking for social scientists, designers, and artists to tackle not just the infrastructural issues around space settlement, but also the business models that are going to help us get off the planet.”
UAE is preparing its first unmanned mission to Mars, which is expected to launch in 2020, a mission that will add the Arab country to a very few list of parties that sent a probe into orbit around the Red Planet; the US, Russia, India, and the European Space Agency. The UAE has also said it wants to create a colony on Mars by 2117.
“Although each submitting team must contain at least one person with a Ph.D. or equivalent qualification, the program is open to anyone regardless of discipline, background or origin.” Added Raford.
