Abu Dhabi: Legendary American astronaut Buzz Aldrin praised the UAE’s decision to establish its own space agency to launch a research probe to Mars as a “giant leap” in space technologies.

“By committing to its Mars mission, the UAE is making a giant leap in space technologies,” said Aldrin, who made history when he became the second man to walk on the moon, just after Neil Armstrong in the Apollo 11 mission.

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins became the first men to set foot on the moon. The plaque they left on the surface of the moon reads, “Here men from the planet Earth set foot on the moon. We came in peace for all mankind.”

Aldrin urged the UAE to join hands for an international effort towards building a permanent settlement on the red planet to commemorate the 50th anniversary of 1969 landing on the moon.

The astronaut who has been vociferous about space exploration said the journey to mars will not be a race about who reaches first as it was in the 1960’s but a collaborative attempt among many countries.

The UAE Mars Mission will provide the truly global picture of the Martian atmosphere through an unmanned probe to be launched in July 2020 to reach Mars in 2021, according to the engineers involved in the project.

A purely Emirati team composed of 150 engineers and scientists will work on the mission, which will allow the country to improve techniques of monitoring climate, data utilisation and image processing. This all stems from space technology which can help lead to benefits in other industries such as healthcare. It will create new opportunities for scientists and engineers.

Aldrin spoke to the audience at the majlis of His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi ad Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE, about his early life and how his father’s background in aviation led to him joining the military and becoming a fighter pilot in the US Air Force.

“If space was going to be the next frontier then Buzz wanted to be a part of it and he took steps to become one of the early astronauts, continuing his education and receiving his doctorate from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in Astronautics,” Aldrin said.

Aldrin added he had used his fighter pilot experience of intercepting enemy aircraft to write his doctoral thesis titled: “Line-of-sight guidance techniques for manned orbital rendezvous,” the method for spacecraft to meet in space.

Aldrin also told the story of Kennedy’s commitment to landing a man on the moon before the end of 1960s and the example of leadership and teamwork it took to achieve what was considered to be “impossible”. The US space program took many people and teamwork to accomplish all aspects of the space program from the Mercury program, the Gemini program, and finally the Apollo program to land on the moon. As a scuba diver Buzz became the first astronaut to train underwater simulating weightlessness in space and he became the first astronaut to have a successful spacewalk setting a five-and-a-half hour record in orbit during his Gemini 12 mission with Jim Lovell.

After returning from the moon the Apollo 11 crew toured the world visiting Kings and Queens and world leaders and they received many awards and accolades. After the Apollo missions came Skylab, Apollo Soyuz – the joint mission between the USA and Russia - and eventually the shuttle program and the International Space Station. But everyone wondered what was next. The clear answer was Mars.

Aldrin decided he would continue to push the boundaries and figure out the steps to get to Mars. In 1985 he developed a method using gravity assist of swinging by planets to get from Earth to the moon and back on continual orbits. However, it was determined that this was less practical to get to the moon. A former NASA administrator suggested that Buzz to take a look at using this method to get to and from Mars.

Aldrin proposed the existence of a special spacecraft trajectory using a Mars Cycler spacecraft – now called the Aldrin-Purdue Cycler - traveling on a trajectory that would pass near the planets Earth and Mars on a regular (cyclic) basis. Aldrin had been working on this concept on his own for many years but finally Professor Jim Longuski of Purdue University saw the merit in this approach to Mars and began to get his students to take a look at this concept and help Aldrin fully develop it.