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DUBAI: Dubai’s Expo 2020 two-day digital event “Space Week” that featured the latest on space travel and exploration came to a close on Tuesday.
The event held on Oct. 5-6 brought together Expo 2020 international participants, official partners and the general public to highlight the latest innovations in space research and travel.
It discussed topics such as the participation of women in the space sector and the UAE space landscape.
“Science is the most international profession, the one truly global culture. Protons and proteins are the same everywhere in the world so science can straddle every nationality and faith more easily than most professions can, so we find it easier to collaborate.
It’s clear that more and more of the issues that the world cares about – anything to do with the environment or the climate – require collaboration,” Lord Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal; Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, said.
Space week was the first of Expo-led ten thematic weeks offering a preview of a wide range of exhibitions and initiatives that will be brought to life when Expo 2020 takes place, from Oct. 1 2021 to March 31, 2022.
Omran Sharaf, Project Director of the Emirates Mars Mission (Hope Probe) from the UAE's Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre said: “The nice thing about space is that we don’t have one identity, we are citizens of this planet. So through this mission, the UAE wants to send that message to the Arab youth and inspire them – if the UAE, a young nation is able to reach Mars in less than 50 years, then we can do much more.”
Themes such as new perspectives about life on Earth and combatting misinformation were addressed in the World Majlis, the event's thematic dialogue programme that engaged thought leaders and students.
Brian C. Odom, NASA's acting chief historian (Acting), added: “I’m excited, and I know a lot of people at NASA are, about Expo 2020 and NASA’s participation. I think it’s a great opportunity to talk about our past. It’s a great opportunity to talk about where we are in space flight today. I think that’s what opportunities like this Expo do for us. It allows us to think about what we can accomplish collectively as a species and what might be ahead of us in exploration.”
Meanwhile, on Monday, Saudi Arabia organized its first-of-a-kind meeting of space agency leaders. The Saudi Space Commission met with its counterparts from other G20 countries in a forum to address present and future space enterprise.