Astronauts across the world are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing .
American astronaut, Alfred Worden, was the direction module pilot for Apollo 11 in 1971.
He has stayed 295 hours and 11 minutes in space and was recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records as the "most isolated human being."
During his time alone on the direction module, his kindred space travelers were 3,600 kilometers from him on the Moon's surface.
"I loved it," says Worden, 87, talking from his home in Texas, where he lives inside 10 minutes' drive of Houston's Johnson Space Center. "I completed 75 circles of the Moon and watched the Earth rise 75 times."
As one of only a handful couple of inpiduals to see Earth from our close planetary system, Worden knows more than most the importance of the primary Moon landing, which occurred 50 years prior on Saturday.
Nasa's 1969 Apollo 11 space mission, during which Neil Armstrong made "one giant leap for mankind", stays one of the twentieth century's most noteworthy occasions. It caught the minds of many, including those of us who will never wander past Earth's environment.
500 years after Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first and second people separately to venture on to the dusty landscape of this pine body, space desire has been grasped by nations over the globe, including the Arab area.
The Arab world's role in the space race
The UAE is driving the Arab world's space charge. In April, it was affirmed that Hazza Al Mansouri will become the first Emirati in space when he participated in an International Space Station mission this year, with Sultan Al Neyadi named as reinforcement space explorer.
In July 2020, the Emirates Mars Mission will dispatch its Hope rocket from the Tanegashima Space Center in Japan. It will land at the Red Planet in 2021 to match with the 50th commemoration of the UAE's establishment.
In 2017, the nation likewise uncovered its arrangement to make the principal human settlement on Mars by 2117.
Hope rocket from the Tanegashima Space Center in Japan. It will land at the Red Planet in 2021 to match with the 50th commemoration of the UAE's establishment.
Somewhere else in the MENA region, Morocco a year ago propelled its second Earth observation satellite, Mohammed VI-B. Since 1998, 32 satellites have been propelled into our solar system by eight African countries, with Egypt, Algeria and Morocco among them.
In any case, as the 50th commemoration of the maiden Moon landing is stamped, it is most likely reasonable to break down the Arab world's situation in current worldwide space aspirations and ask what significance the Apollo 11 celebrations hold for Arabs.
Barely any inpiduals in the locale may know that Egypt assumed a significant job in Apollo 11's prosperity.
Farouk El Baz, who was born in the Nile Delta town of Zagazig, was secretary of NASA's Lunar Landing Site Selection Committee during the principal Moon landing.
He had not in any case gotten his US citizenship when Armstrong and Aldrin crossed the lunar surface.
Nowadays, El Baz, 81, goes regularly to the Middle East from his home in Leesburg, Virginia to advance desert research, for example, his trailblazing endeavors to apply space symbolism to groundwater investigation in the area.
"There was likewise a significant observatory in Egypt, called the Helwan Observatory, that had a station at Kottamia, which is a site that is somewhere between Cairo and Suez," says Jorg Matthias Determann, creator of Space Science and the Arab World – Astronauts, Observatories and Nationalism in the Middle East.
Determann says this observatory contributed fundamental data to Apollo 11's lunar cartography, helping NASA do the Moon landing.
"The US needed good maps of the lunar surface and for that they had to know the height of various highlights," he clarifies. "They really utilized an observatory in Japan, in France and this one in Egypt to give data to the maps."
"Be that as it may, Arab space projects are still in their earliest stages," says NidhalGuessoum, an Algerian astrophysicist and educator at the American University of Sharjah.
"In the first place, the vast majority of them are constrained to satellites and little in the investigation space. Furthermore, the UAE program is expansive and goal-oriented, however it is as yet youthful; it needs time to develop and ideally lure others to copy it, co-work with it and reinforce it."
Looking to the past for motivation
As the Arab world endeavors to make space a piece of its future, it would do well to look to the past for motivation. Other than Egypt's commitment to the Apollo 11 program, there is another motivation behind why the area ought to pay attention of the 50th commemoration of the principal Moon landing."
El-Baz told SEE that the U.S. government has kept serious secrets about Armstrong's trip not disclosed.
"The US government has great secrets about Armstrong's moon voyage. They do not want to disclose some of the secrets of the landing plan," El-Baz told us.
"But they allow the scientists who took part in the trip to disclose their information. They also allow us to sell and display our holdings during the flight."
"So far I have kept some of the pictures taken during the trip to the moon, including a negative image of the moon.
He explained that this picture can't be printed due to its large size.
El-Baz was the manager in charge of locating Apollo 11 landing site.
He added that he was "very upset" because Armstrong had deviated 7 kilometers west of the selected area for landing!
"But this deviation was not a serious risk."
It is worth mentioning that the Egyptian scientist Baz received his doctorate at MIT University.
He posted a photo on his Facebook page as he appears beside Apollo 11 scientists.
"Thank you, my beautiful friends. I thought no one would notice this picture for a number of older men! It is wonderful to see that many people realize the great achievements of these great human beings - those who have elevated humanity to the highest possible level."
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