11 states set up pan-Arab body for space program

Eleven Arab states including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Algeria and Morocco, on Tuesday signed on to the first regional team to cooperate on a space program, according to Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum. “Today at the Global Space Congress in Abu Dhabi, we attended the signing of a charter to establish the first Arab body for space cooperation,” he said. The pan-Arab team’s first project is “a satellite that Arab scientists will work on from here in the UAE,” he noted. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, the UAE’s vice president and prime minister, vowed in 2017 to send four Emirati astronauts to the International Space Station by 2022, AFP reported.