Middle East

Egypt's commercial satellite communications operator NileSat has selected U.S. commercial space launch company SpaceX to launch its NileSat-301 communications satellite in 2022. The two companies signed a contract for the launch on 21 January 2020 in Cairo, the capital city of Egypt.

The Mohammed bin Rashid Innovation Fund (MBRIF), an initiative launched by the UAE Ministry of Finance to support innovation in the UAE, has announced the addition of 11 new members to the Fund's accelerator programme.

Russia, Kazakhstan, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are set to proceed with a trilateral agreement to modernise the 'Gagarin's Start' launch complex at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, according to a 16 January 2020 report in Azerbaijan's Trend News Agency citing Russian and Kazakh sources.

In a major policy speech delivered on 16 January 2020, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan unveiled a range of large government infrastructure and technology projects for 2020 and beyond.

Given the very large turnout for registration to the second batch seeking to join the UAE Astronaut Programme, the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) has extended the deadline for application submissions until 31 March 2020, aimed at providing Emiratis aspiring to engage in scientific exploration and manned space missions the opportunity to enrol in the programme.

Arianespace has announced that it intends to launch the UAE’s second reconnaissance satellite, Falcon Eye 2, on board a Soyuz satellite launch vehicle from the Guiana Space Centre in early March 2020.

The UAE Space Agency and the Saudi Space Commission met on the sidelines of the Saudi-Emirati Coordination Council in Riyadh, the capital city of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, on 10 January 2020, where both parties officially activated their Memorandum of Understanding that was initially signed last year.

Advances in technology for observing the earth from space have resulted in the formation of a new company which will bring a range of innovative satellite intelligence and data services to market. 4 Earth Intelligence (4EI) has pioneered the use of satellite data for smart monitoring and analysis creating city, region and countrywide data solutions for applications such as air quality, asset management, ecology and urban heat monitoring.

In the presence of Khaled Abdel Ghaffar, Egypt’s Minister for Higher Education and Scientific Research, and Stéphane Romatet, France’s Ambassador to Egypt, Centre national d'études spatiales (CNES) President Jean-Yves Le Gall opened the first joint France-Egypt Space Seminar in Cairo on 14 January 2020.

Group 42, an Abu Dhabi-based artificial intelligence and cloud computing company, announced today that it has acquired Bayanat for Mapping and Surveying Services LLC, an end-to-end and customised geospatial data products and services provider.