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29 March 2024

Abu Dhabi woman intern returns from Nasa

Published
By Wam

An Abu Dhabi woman Nasa research fellow has returned home from a four- month internship at the US space agency.

Ghena Al Hanae has completed her mission work which called for providing research support for Nasa's Mars rover educational and outreach programs with the goal of inspiring the next generation to pursue science and technology careers involving Mars research and exploration.

The Nasa Lunar Science Institute where Ghena worked played a role in building the Curiosity’s rover in terms of software design, sensor integration and wind tunnel testing.

According to Ghena Al Hanae, "My work involved a small rover used to bring hands-on space exploration experiences to students, scientists, engineers and the public to engage the future generation in charge of rovers."

In addition to Ghena's work at Nasa’s Ames Research Centre in Silicon Valley, California other successful UAE intern's mission work has focussed on analysis of remote sensing data, phone sats (joint venture with Google to connect mobile phones to an orbiting satellite), wind-turbine research for use in avionics, space shuttle solid waste processing and infrastructure, green building sustainability systems, etc.

Lisa LaBonte, CEO of the Arab Youth Venture Foundation, said, " The calibre of talent that we have seen in our interns such as Ghena, is a testament to UAE universities' engineering programs  and  also a tribute to the support by parents of Emirati students."

The NASA-AYVF innovative partnership program was the first agreement of its kind and signed in 2009 between the UAE's Arab Youth Venture Foundation and USA's National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The program welcomes only the best UAE engineering students and has to date seen a rotation of 16 UAE nationals spend four months in USA since June 2010.