Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre

Hello! We are the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre, or MBRSC. We are the space agency for our country, the United Arab Emirates, which you might know as the UAE. Our main goal is to explore the amazing universe beyond our world and to use science and technology to make life better for people here on Earth. We weren't always called the MBRSC. Our journey began in 2006, when we were created as the Emirates Institution for Advanced Science and Technology, also known as EIAST. Then, in 2015, we were given our current name to continue our important work.

Our first steps toward space started not with rockets, but with satellites. Satellites are special machines that we build and send into space to orbit, or circle, our planet. One of our earliest projects involved developing our own satellites right here in the UAE. We built and launched our first two, named DubaiSat-1 and DubaiSat-2. From high above, these satellites took detailed pictures of Earth. These images were very useful. They helped with city planning by showing how our communities were growing, and they allowed us to watch for environmental changes to help protect our planet. This work led to a major achievement: KhalifaSat. This was a very special project because it was the first satellite to be built completely in the UAE by our own talented Emirati engineers.

After learning to build satellites that observe our own world, we looked farther out into space. We set our sights on the Red Planet, Mars. This led to our most famous project, the Emirates Mars Mission. For this mission, we designed and built a special spacecraft called the Hope Probe. It was a huge and exciting challenge. In 2020, we launched the Hope Probe on its long journey through space. For seven months, it traveled millions of kilometers. Finally, in 2021, the Hope Probe successfully arrived at Mars and entered its orbit. Its mission is to study the weather and climate of the entire planet from above. The information it gathers helps us understand the Martian atmosphere, and we share all of our discoveries with scientists around the world so everyone can learn together.

While our probes travel to other planets, we also wanted to send people from our country into space. To do this, we created the UAE Astronaut Programme, a special project to find and train our own astronauts. We were so proud when Hazzaa AlMansoori became the first Emirati to travel to space in 2019. He spent eight incredible days living and working aboard the International Space Station, or ISS, which is a large science lab that orbits Earth. A few years later, in 2023, another of our astronauts, Sultan AlNeyadi, completed the first long-duration space mission by an Arab astronaut. He lived on the ISS for a full six months, conducting experiments and even performing the first spacewalk by an Arab astronaut.

Our work continues as we plan for the future. We recently focused on exploring Earth’s closest neighbor with the Emirates Lunar Mission. As part of this mission, we built a small, tough rover named Rashid, which was designed to drive on the Moon's surface and study it up close. Even though the mission to land the rover on the Moon didn't succeed, we learned so much from the experience. Every challenge teaches us something new and makes us better prepared for what comes next. Today, we are busy planning new missions, training the next generation of astronauts, and using the excitement of space exploration to inspire young people all across the UAE to study science and engineering and to dream big.