Mars 2117 and the Governance Question: Can the Gulf Build a Colony Without a Constitution?

On February 9, 2021, the Hope probe entered Mars orbit, making the United Arab Emirates the fifth entity in history to reach the red planet and the first Arab nation to do so. The Al Amal mission cost approximately 200 million US dollars, a fraction of comparable Western programs, and was completed on schedule. It was a statement of intent that went beyond atmospheric science. In the same year, the UAE government reaffirmed the Mars 2117 strategy, a hundred-year national project to establish a human settlement on Mars.

The strategy was first announced in 2017 by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE. It was not presented as an aspiration. It was presented as a plan, complete with intermediate milestones: the construction of a Mars Science City in the Dubai desert for simulation research, the development of Emirati space technology capabilities, and the gradual buildup toward settlement within a century.

For the Gulf states, space is not a hobby. It is economic strategy. In a region where hydrocarbon revenues will decline within a generation, the space sector represents the kind of high-technology, knowledge-intensive industry that post-oil economies need. The Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre in Dubai, the Saudi Space Agency established in 2018, Bahrain's National Space Science Agency, each signals a regional commitment that goes beyond prestige.

But ambition alone does not solve the question that no government, including the UAE, has answered: if a settlement is built on Mars, who governs it? What laws apply? What happens to the people who live there and cannot come back?

The Hope Probe and What It Proved

Al Amal was designed as a weather satellite for Mars, mapping atmospheric dynamics over a full Martian year. Scientifically, it delivered. The data on dust storms, atmospheric water vapor, and oxygen distribution across the Martian atmosphere have been shared openly with the international research community.

Strategically, it proved something more significant. A nation of ten million people, with a space program younger than most of its citizens, could plan, build, and deliver an interplanetary mission. The Emirates Mars Mission was managed by a team with an average age under thirty-five, many of them trained through partnerships with the University of Colorado Boulder and other institutions. The project demonstrated that technical capability in deep-space operations is no longer limited to the Cold War spacefaring nations.

This matters for the governance question because it established the UAE as a credible voice in space policy, not a bystander. When the UAE participates in discussions about Mars settlement at the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, it speaks as a nation that has orbited the planet in question.

Mars 2117: Strategy or Vision?

The Mars 2117 strategy operates on a timeline that spans four generations. The first phase focuses on technology development and Mars analog research. Mars Science City, a 176,000-square-meter complex planned for the Dubai desert, is designed to simulate Martian conditions for researchers testing habitat designs, food production systems, and life-support technology.

The second phase envisions the development of transport and infrastructure capabilities. The third phase targets initial human presence. The fourth, full settlement.

No other government has articulated a Mars settlement plan at this scale. NASA's Moon-to-Mars roadmap is incremental, focused on the Artemis lunar program as a stepping stone. China's Mars ambitions are primarily robotic, with crewed missions discussed only in the most general terms. The European Space Agency has no independent crewed deep-space program.

The UAE's strategy is uniquely explicit about the end goal: a functioning settlement. This explicitness is both the strategy's strength and its vulnerability. Because Mars 2117 acknowledges settlement as an objective, it cannot avoid the governance questions that other space programs defer by focusing on "exploration."

Who will govern an Emirati settlement on Mars? Would it be an extension of UAE sovereignty, in potential conflict with Article II of the Outer Space Treaty, which prohibits national appropriation of celestial bodies? Would it be an international zone under multilateral authority? Would residents have citizenship, and if so, of which entity? The Mars 2117 documentation does not address these questions. Neither does any other nation's space strategy. But the UAE, by naming settlement as the goal, has the most pressing reason to develop answers.

Post-Oil Diversification and the Space Economy

The strategic logic behind Gulf space investment is inseparable from economic transition. Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030, the UAE's Centennial Plan 2071, and similar frameworks across the Gulf Cooperation Council states all identify knowledge economies, advanced technology, and scientific research as pillars of the post-hydrocarbon future.

Space fits this framework precisely. The global space economy was valued at approximately 546 billion US dollars in 2023, according to the Space Foundation's annual report. Satellite services, launch services, ground equipment, and government space budgets have grown consistently. For the Gulf states, establishing a domestic space sector creates high-skilled employment, attracts international talent, generates technology transfers, and positions national brands in the global innovation landscape.

The UAE Space Agency was established in 2014. The Saudi Space Agency, initially the Saudi Space Commission, was created in 2018. Both have invested in satellite manufacturing, astronaut programs, and international partnerships. Sultan Al Neyadi became the first Arab astronaut to complete a long-duration mission on the International Space Station in 2023, spending six months aboard. Rayyanah Barnawi became the first Saudi woman in space the same year.

This infrastructure is real. The investment is serious. But the gap between orbiting Earth for six months and governing a permanent Mars settlement is not a gap that money alone can close. It requires legal architecture that does not yet exist anywhere in the world.

Islamic Jurisprudence and Space Settlement

The question of how Islamic legal traditions engage with space settlement is not hypothetical for MENA audiences. Several scholars of Islamic jurisprudence have explored how existing principles might apply to activities beyond Earth.

The concept of khalifah, stewardship of the Earth, is central to Islamic environmental ethics. Humanity is understood as a trustee, not an owner, of the natural world. Whether this stewardship extends to other planets is a matter of scholarly discussion. Some jurists argue that the principle applies universally, making humans responsible custodians of any celestial body they reach. Others note that classical texts address the Earth specifically and that extraterrestrial settlement raises genuinely new questions.

The concept of maslahah, public interest, provides a framework for evaluating space activities. If Mars settlement serves the collective interest of humanity or the Muslim ummah, it may be permissible or even encouraged. But maslahah also requires that harm be minimized. The irreversible risks of one-way missions, the impossibility of withdrawing consent, and the potential contamination of another planet all require careful evaluation under this principle.

On questions of governance, Islamic political theory has rich traditions of consultation, or shura, and the accountability of rulers to both divine law and community welfare. A Mars settlement governed by shura principles would differ substantially from both the corporate governance model proposed by SpaceX and the direct democracy Elon Musk has discussed. Whether such frameworks would be applied in practice depends on the composition and values of the settler community, but for a Mars 2117 project anchored in an Islamic society, the question is relevant.

Practical issues also arise around religious observance. How would prayer direction toward Mecca be determined from Mars? Islamic scholars have already addressed this for astronauts on the International Space Station, with Malaysia's National Fatwa Council issuing guidelines in 2007 for Malaysian astronaut Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor. The guidelines recommended facing Earth or, if that was not feasible, facing any direction and relying on intention. Extending this framework to Mars, where Earth is a point of light rather than a visible sphere, would require further jurisprudential work.

The Sovereignty Trap

UAE Federal Law No. 12 of 2019 on the Regulation of the Space Sector established a domestic legal framework for space activities by Emirati entities and individuals. The law covers registration, licensing, liability, and the protection of space objects. It does not claim sovereignty over any celestial body, consistent with the Outer Space Treaty.

But the law creates a regulatory relationship between the UAE government and Emirati space actors that could extend, in theory, to activities on Mars. If an Emirati company or government entity builds a habitat on Mars, UAE law could claim jurisdiction over that habitat's operators and residents, much as the ISS Intergovernmental Agreement assigns jurisdiction by module registration.

The difficulty is enforcement. On the ISS, an astronaut can be returned to Earth within hours. On Mars, the minimum transit time is six months, and launch windows open only every twenty-six months. Jurisdiction without enforcement is aspiration, not governance.

For the Gulf states, this creates a strategic dilemma. Investing heavily in Mars settlement capability without resolving the governance question means building toward a destination where the rules of engagement remain undefined. Other nations face the same dilemma, but the UAE's explicit commitment to settlement under Mars 2117 makes it more acute. The nation that has gone furthest in declaring its intention to settle Mars has done the least to articulate how that settlement would be governed.

Saudi Arabia, NEOM, and the Space Corridor

Saudi Arabia's approach to space intersects with the broader NEOM development in the northwestern province of Tabuk. NEOM, the five-hundred-billion-dollar megacity project, includes plans for advanced technology sectors. Space technology is among them.

The Saudi Space Agency has signed cooperation agreements with NASA, Roscosmos, and the China National Space Administration. The Jeddah-based King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology has decades of satellite technology experience. The kingdom's investment in space is not starting from zero.

What Saudi Arabia has not done, any more than the UAE, is develop a position on Mars governance. Vision 2030 positions space as part of the diversification portfolio. It does not address what happens when diversification leads to the question of who writes the laws for a settlement 225 million kilometers away.

The Gulf states collectively have the financial resources, the political will, and the growing technical capability to participate in Mars settlement. What they lack, along with every other actor on Earth, is a legal and ethical framework for what that settlement would actually look like as a governed community.

Building Before the Blueprints Exist

The UAE's Mars 2117 strategy is the most forward-looking settlement plan any government has produced. The Hope probe demonstrated that the technical ambition is not empty. Sultan Al Neyadi's ISS mission proved that the human capital pipeline is real. The financial commitment, within the context of Gulf post-oil diversification, is structurally rational.

None of this changes the fact that the governance question remains unanswered. The Outer Space Treaty prohibits sovereignty claims but offers no framework for settlement. UAE space law regulates activities but does not contemplate permanent habitation. Islamic jurisprudence offers rich ethical principles but has not yet produced a consensus on extraterrestrial governance. The international community has not even begun the negotiations that would produce a Mars governance regime.

The Gulf states are building toward Mars faster than the world is building the rules for being there. This is not unique to the region. The same is true of SpaceX, of NASA, of China. But for the UAE, whose national strategy names settlement as an explicit goal, the gap between ambition and governance is not an oversight. It is the next problem that needs solving, and the hundred-year clock is already running.