Qatar is boosting its space exploration programme in a bid to discover more planets, setting up new observatories in Asia, Europe and America, the country’s leading astronomer Dr Khalid al-Subai has said.
About $5m will be pumped into the country’s Exoplanet Survey, a research program that searches for unidentified planets in other solar systems, while a further $1m will be spend on promoting astronomy within Qatar and the region, Gulf Times has reported.
The new observatories will be established in New Mexico, where Qatar already has a station, the Canary Islands and either India or Iraq, al-Subai, Qatar’s first professional astronomer, said.
Al-Subai was instrumental in the discovery of Qatar-1b, a giant Jupiter-like exoplanet, meaning it revolves around a star in a galaxy other than Earth.
The exoplanet is significantly larger than any planet within Earth’s solar system and has a temperature of more than 1000C.
At the time of the discovery, al-Subai, who is the director of research in the Research and Development division of Qatar Foundation, said it was a great achievement for Qatar’s space program and marked the beginning of a “new era of collaborative astrophysics research” between Qatar, the UK and the US, who also participated in the discovery of Qatar-1b.
Al-Subai said the new observatories would help speed up the discovery of new exoplanets.
The expansion also meant Qatar would hire more astronomers to boost its present team of three.
http://www.arabianbusiness.com/qatar-set-boost-space-exploration-programme-503771.html
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