When Sarah al-Amiri was a child growing up in Abu Dhabi with a fascination for space, her young country seemed light years away from reaching for the stars.

Now the 34-year-old is a government minister and one of the drivers of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) ambitious project behind the "Hope" probe that is due to reach the orbit of Mars on Tuesday.

As a youngster poring over images of far-away galaxies, Amiri was enraptured by "the number of stars, solar systems, planets -- objects that exist out there which numerically we can't comprehend".

"But more importantly the ways by which scientists explore it -- be it by telescopes, spacecrafts, radio images," she told AFP.

At that time Abu Dhabi and its sister emirate Dubai were nothing like the metropolises, bristling with skyscrapers, that they are now.

But after a high-speed development drive, the UAE sent its first astronaut into space in 2019 and last year launched the Hope mission to orbit Mars in order to unravel the secrets of the weather on the Red Planet.

The first interplanetary mission for the Arab world, it is designed to inspire young people in the region and pave the way for scientific breakthroughs.

Amiri is now chairwoman of the UAE Space Agency after serving as deputy project manager of the Mars initiative -- roles she never imagined despite her childhood passions.

- Meteoric rise -

After graduating from high school in 2004, Amiri attended the American University of Sharjah, earning Bachelor's and Master's degrees in computer engineering -- her other abiding interest.

"It was a deep fascination into how these objects and computers worked. How they were built. How they were designed. How the hardware operates with the software."

But it was not until she walked into an interview at the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre in Dubai in 2009 that she realised that space would be her destiny.

"I completely fell on it by accident," she said, adding the space centre was looking for engineers so she applied for a job.

Amiri's first job was to work on Dubai Sat-1, the first Emirati Earth observation satellite, and she rapidly rose through the ranks.

She was appointed minister of state for advanced technology in 2017, and became chairwoman of the Space Agency in August.

Also last year, the BBC listed her as one of the 100 most inspiring and influential women of 2020.

Her meteoric rise, along with a clutch of other young Emirati ministers, is a reflection of a country with ambitious plans to become a hub for technology and science, to boost its soft power and diversify its economy away from oil.

- 'Monumental shifts' -

"My life as a person born in the 1980s is completely different from the lives of my parents who were born here in the '40s and '50s," said Amiri.

She said her father's home was hooked to a power generator because they had electricity shortages and "the water they drank had rust in it, it was yellow in colour. They had to filter it using pieces of cloth".

"Yes, we (as Emiratis) do appreciate that organic growth comes, but we cannot survive as a nation by just relying on organic growth. There needs to be large, monumental shifts.

"The Emirates Mars Mission has... inspired the nation to look to the future and look to the skies," Amiri said.

"It has shown that collaboration across nations, geographies, creeds and in the face of remarkable challenges can forge brilliant outcomes for the benefit of us all."

Amiri comes from a line of accomplished women, including doctors, accountants, teachers and bankers.

"My mother is a college graduate. She was a teacher who was quite passionate about what she was doing," said Amiri, herself a mother of two, including an 11-year-old boy who is an avid "Star Wars" fan.

Amiri said "there were no bounds" facing her in the UAE, a country where women are prominent at top levels of government and business.

Emirati 'Hope' probe approaches Mars
Dubai (AFP) Feb 7, 2021 - The first Arab interplanetary mission is expected to reach Mars' orbit Tuesday in what is considered the most critical part of the journey to unravel the secrets of weather on the Red Planet.

The unmanned probe -- named "Al-Amal", Arabic for "Hope" -- blasted off from Japan last year, marking the next step in the United Arab Emirates' ambitious space programme.

Here are some facts and figures about the oil-rich nation's project, which draws inspiration from the Middle East's golden age of cultural and scientific achievements.

- Outsize plans -

The UAE, made up of seven emirates including Dubai and Abu Dhabi, has 12 satellites in orbit, with plans to launch several more in coming years.

In September 2019 it sent the first Emirati into space, Hazza al-Mansouri, who was part of a three-member crew. They blasted off from Kazakhstan, returning home after an eight-day mission in which he became the first Arab to visit the International Space Station.

But the UAE's ambitions go much further, with a goal of building a human settlement on Mars by 2117.

In the meantime, it plans to create a white-domed "Science City" in the deserts outside Dubai to simulate Martian conditions and develop the technology needed to colonise the planet.

The UAE has plans to launch an unmanned rover to the moon by 2024 and is also eyeing future mining projects beyond Earth, as well as space tourism.

It has signed a memorandum of understanding with Richard Branson's space tourism company Virgin Galactic and announced the creation of a "space court" to settle commercial disputes relating to space industries.

- Hope's journey -

The "Hope" probe lifted off from Japan's Tanegashima Space Center on July 20 last year.

The 1,350-kilogramme (2,970-pound) probe -- about the size of an SUV -- took seven months to travel the 493 million kilometres (307 million miles) to Mars.

Officials say that the "most critical and complex" manoeuvre will begin on Tuesday at 1530 GMT, to slow the spacecraft enough to be captured by the gravity of the Red Planet.

The probe will for the first time fire all six of its Delta-V thrusters, for a duration of 27 minutes, to slow its cruising speed of 121,000 kilometres per hour to about 18,000 kph.

The process will consume half of the spacecraft's fuel, and it will take 11 minutes for a signal on its progress to reach Earth.

If successful, one loop around the planet will take 40 hours.

The "Hope" probe will remain in this phase for approximately two months, during which further testing will take place, until it is ready to enter the "science" orbit -- when its data collection work begins.

- Study and inspire -

Unlike the other two Mars ventures this year, the Tianwen-1 from China and Mars 2020 from the United States, the UAE's probe will not land on the Red Planet.

Three instruments mounted on the "Hope" probe will provide a picture of the Mars atmosphere throughout the Martian year -- 687 days.

The first is an infrared spectrometer to measure the lower atmosphere and analyse the temperature structure.

The second is a high-resolution imager that will also provide information about ozone levels. And the third, an ultraviolet spectrometer, is to measure oxygen and hydrogen levels from a distance of up to 43,000 kilometres from the surface.

Studying the atmospheres of other planets will allow for a better understanding of the Earth's climate, officials say, and pave the way for scientific breakthroughs.

But the project is also designed to inspire a region too often beset by turmoil, and recall its heyday of scientific advances during the Middle Ages.

"The UAE wanted to send a strong message to the Arab youth and to remind them of the past, that we used to be generators of knowledge," Omran Sharaf, the mission's project manager, told AFP.

The mission, if successful, would make the UAE the fifth nation to ever reach Mars, and is timed to mark the 50th anniversary of the country's unification.

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Tianwen 1 probe set to enter Mars orbit before New Year
Beijing (XNA) Feb 04, 2021
China's Tianwen 1 Mars probe is set to enter the orbit of the red planet around Feb 10, two days before Chinese New Year, according to China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp, the nation's leading space contractor. The State-owned conglomerate said in a statement on Wednesday afternoon that the spacecraft will conduct a "braking" operation to decelerate and make sure it will be captured by Martian gravity. Tianwen 1 has flown for 196 days and has traveled more than 450 million kilometers ... read more