Nasa astronauts hail UAE’s strides in space exploration

The strides made by the UAE in space exploration are impressive, a Nasa astronaut from the US said on Tuesday. Susan Kilrain, who has been to Space twice in 1997, on the Nasa space shuttle Columbia, spoke to Khaleej Times on the sidelines of the ‘Space 2101’ event, currently being held at the Dubai International Academy (DIA) Al Barsha.

“I’m excited to see that there was an Emirati astronaut just a year ago (who went to space) and that there’ll be another one next year,” she said.

The aerospace engineer and former US navy officer will also be speaking alongside the UAE’s first astronaut Hazzaa AlMansouri on Wednesday at the Museum of the Future.

She told students to always dream big — and enjoy the journey all the way. “There aren’t any limits to what you can do. It’s important to have a goal, like my goal was to become an astronaut. But it’s equally important to enjoy the journey, because most of your time is going to be spent achieving your goal. It’s not going to be spent flying to or in space if you want to be an astronaut,” said Susan.

Walking the talk, Susan, who grew up in the US state of Georgia, got her education in aerospace engineering after which she got selected by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa).

She said schools and parents can motivate children to pursue their goals by making science fun. “I think the most important thing is to make STEM (Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fun. Children learn when they’re having fun and they pay attention. That’s when they establish a love for science or math or engineering or whatever it may be. If they’re having fun and so at the school age, it needs to be hands-on for sure…hands on projects, and fun.”

Susan added the scientific community benefits from open collaboration with international colleagues. “I think it’s important for Nasa to collaborate with international partners in space exploration, because it’s going to take the entire planet, basically all of humanity to explore further into space. It is also important to take what we’ve learned [in space] and apply it back here to preserving our Earth. So, any collaboration is great.

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Dr Michaela Musilova, astrobiologist, analogue astronaut and writer, recounted how she fell in love with science after her parents took her on hiking trips and exposed her to nature as a kid. “When I came across a book about volcanoes, I was fascinated and later my parents actually took me to see a volcano. When I began pursuing my dream of becoming an astronaut, I would read a lot about space, and my mom would give me books on space and make me watch movies on space.

“It’s important for parents to keep encouraging that ‘seed’ when you see that a child is very interested in something even though it might be something very different to what the family likes,” she said.

“They will find out if there’s something they really want to do, or maybe they’ll realise that’s not something they want to do for the rest of their lives. They might feel…I’m going to switch to something else and children change their mind a lot too. So, it’s important to not suppress the child’s interest. Then with time, the children themselves will realise what thing they have a passion for,” Dr Michaela added.

She also highlighted how women are breaking the glass ceiling in space, but said more needs to be done to push the boundaries and seek gender equality. “Many times, the conditions are not made good enough for women and this is everywhere…even in Europe and America. For example, conditions are not made good for women to have families. Therefore, many women leave when they want to become mothers. There’s still a huge pay gap everywhere in the world, along with discrimination and harassment. These are issues that need to be tackled as the number one priority because young girls may want to become scientists. They will go to the university, but then when they start feeling harassed and discriminated against, they wouldn’t want to continue,” she pointed out.