Autonomous transport, flying taxis and AI are poised to make Dubai a smart city in UAE's grand plan for becoming a tech hub. But the Emirates' ambitions transcend the skies, as it has already set sights on reaching Mars and even colonising Earth's neighbouring planet by the next century.

UAE's Mars probe may be a couple of months away from reaching the red planet, but it has already captured a promising view of things to come. A day after the country's national day celebrations, Vice President and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates, and ruler of the Emirate of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed tweeted the first image of Mars taken by the Hope Probe.

From a distance of 135mn km, Mars seems like a bright red speck in the vast empty space, guiding the mission which is silently surging through the galaxy at a speed of almost 95000 km/hour. The 1350 kg device is expected to collect 1000 GB of data once it reaches Mars in February 2021.

 
Al Amal, as it is called in Arabic, will study the red globe's atmosphere and share insights about weather changes, dust storms and oxygen levels with 200 global scientific institutes. Meanwhile, Emirati architects are already working on building a Mars city in the desert to simulate how life in a colony on the planet will look like in 2117.

Homes built by 3D printing and lab-grown proteins are part of the Emirates' vision for a Martian metropolis, with 600,000 residents. Meanwhile aiming at Mars is just one part of the country's space aspirations, while it gears up to send a rover to the moon by 2024.

Currently, UAE is leading the Middle East's space race with Saudi Arabia set to fly in with its investment in Virgin Galactic. But with great interstellar strides, UAE also has to abide by space governance norms laid down by Artemis accords which it signed this year, for peaceful space exploration.