The UAE has successfully become an established space player, an international space advocacy organisation said…writes Lina Ibrahim
Speaking with the Emirates News Agency (WAM), Pascale Ehrenfreund, President of the International Astronautical Federation (IAF), said the space sector has become extremely vibrant as more emerging countries and commercial players are entering it.
“I think the UAE is not anymore an emerging space nation. I think it has already really managed ambitious goals and has a mission at Mars and is looking for future for the mission to the Moon. It has satellites… I think it’s already really an established space actor,” she said.
IAF, in partnership with the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC), is currently holding the 72nd International Astronautical Congress (IAC), the world’s largest global space event, which is taking place at the Dubai World Trade Centre, with the participation of about 4,000 industry players and experts.
“We are living in a very exciting time of space activities. New commercial actors are entering the market, which is obviously a new component, but it is a multistakeholder approach,” Ehrenfreund said when asked about the commercial ventures that entered the space tourism industry.
There are currently three dominant players from the private sector in space tourism: Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, Richard Branson’ Virgin Galactic and Elon Musk’ SpaceX.
“We’ve had very impressive demonstrations of space tourism from Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin and Space X. Each of those missions is different, but they are more or less paving the way, so that after some time everybody can go to space and it will be affordable for everybody,” Ehrenfreund explained.
When asked about a timeline during which this can be possible, Ehrenfreund said that it is “very difficult to predict a timeline, but it has been increasing enormously and has been developing very fast in the past years”.
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According to Deloitte, the global space economy stood at over US$420 billion in 2020 and is forecasted to grow to over US$1.1 trillion by 2040. How much will the share of the commercial space industry be by then is not clear.
Ehrenfreund is optimistic that the industry will be “steadily growing”, as many emerging nations willing to enter the race.
That is why our next conference is dedicated to emerging countries, she said, in reference to the Global Conference on Space for Emerging Countries (GLEC 2022), which will take place in Quito, Ecuador, in May 2022.
“All the established space agencies and organisations like IAF really have to help emerging countries in order to get [more] space actors,” she added.
