With this, the UAE had staked its claim at becoming one of the 21st Century"s leading space agencies. In the Cold War, such developments would have seemed far-fetched. But space exploration in the 2020s is a very different beast. The space race dominated by the geopolitical rivalry of the US and the Soviet Union has fragmented, and now involves many more players – both commercial entities like America"s SpaceX, and upstart agencies from relatively small countries like the UAE.