Where the Arab World's First Mars Adventure May Have Been Conceived

The American astronauts of the last NASA Moon mission, Apollo 17, visited the United Arab Emirates following that 1972 mission, in 1976, in a visit with then-Sheikh Mohammed bin-Zayed arranged by the Egyptian NASA scientist Farouk el-Baz. The visit is recounted on the “UAE in Space” page of the U.A.E. daily National , with a picture of Sheikh Zayed studying a model of the Space Shuttle which the astronauts had presented to him. The nation’s space agency’s director, Mohammed al Ahbabi, is quoted, “The U.A.E. space program has its roots in the time of Sheikh Zayed.”