UAE extends Mars probe mission until 2028

The United Arab Emirates announced on Tuesday that it would extend its Mars probe mission, now in its fifth year, for an additional three, underlining the oil-rich state's space ambitions.

The UAE's Hope probe arrived in orbit around Mars in 2021 after a seven-month voyage through space, making it the first Arab country to explore the Red Planet with a $200 million investment.

The Emirates Mars Mission (EMM) initially planned to collect one terabit of data on the Martian atmosphere.

It ultimately collected 10 terabits and will be extended until 2028, Ahmad Belhoul Al Falasi, UAE Minister of Sports and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the UAE Space Agency, said during a press conference in Dubai.

The UAE is now hoping to "be one of the 10 biggest" players in the space economy by 2031, Al Falasi told AFP.

"As a space agency our role the first 10 years was just setting up the foundation, so it's predominantly government funded, but right now we're seeing private sector getting involved," he added.

"The next mission to (the) asteroid belt, we've allocated 50 percent of the budget for the private sector," he said.

The Mars mission also helped gather precise observations of the small Martian moon Deimos, as well as comet 3I/ATLAS, only the third interstellar object ever detected to enter the Earth's solar system, the agency said.

The billion-dollar Emirates Mission to the Asteroid Belt, scheduled for 2028, aims to launch an unmanned spacecraft that will travel five billion kilometres (3.1 billion miles) to explore the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.