Space Science and the Arab World ― Astronauts, Observatories and Nationalism in the Middle East

When Sultan bin Salman flew on the shuttle Discovery in 1985, he was the first Arab, Muslim, and member of a royal family in space. Twenty-five years later, the discovery of a planet 500 light-years away by the Qatar Exoplanet Survey—subsequently named "Qatar-Ib"—was evidence of the cutting-edge space science projects taking place across the Middle East.

This book identifies the individuals, institutions, and national ideologies that enabled Arab astronomers and researchers to gain support for space exploration when governments lacked interest. Jörg Matthias Determann shows that the conquest of space became associated with national prestige, security, economic growth and the idea of an "Arab renaissance." Equally important to success were the international collaborations: to benefit from American and Soviet expertise and technology, Arab scientists and officials had to commit to global governance of space and the common interests of humanity. Challenging the view that the golden age of Arabic science and cosmopolitanism was situated in the medieval period, Determann tells the story of the new discoveries and scientific collaborations taking place from the nineteenth century to the present day.

An innovative contribution to Middle East Studies, the book is also highly relevant for scholars in the history of science and nationalism studies.

Jorg Matthias Determann is an assistant professor of history at Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar. He is the author of Researching Biology and Evolution in the Gulf States: Networks of Science in the Middle East (I.B.Tauris, 2015) and Historiography in Saudi Arabia: Globalization and the State in the Middle East (I.B.Tauris, 2013), which received a mention for the British-Kuwait Friendship Society Book Prize in Middle Eastern Studies. He has been a Postdoctoral Fellow at Freie Universitat Berlin and holds a Ph.D. from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.