The Gulf’s new space race for sovereignty

In the 10th century, Baghdad was the world’s leading centre of learning. At the House of Wisdom, scholars from across the Islamic world came together to translate ancient texts, share ideas, and push the boundaries of science.

One of them, Al-Sufi, mapped the stars with such precision that Europe would not match his work for centuries. His Book of Fixed Stars turned scattered points of light into a clear atlas of the night sky.

The tools of that era reflected a civilisation determined to measure and master its world. The astrolabe – part compass, part clock, part calculator – guided traders, marked prayer times, and organised farming cycles. It was the essential technology of its age.

That legacy is still visible. Nearly two-thirds of stars with traditional names – Altair, Aldebaran, Betelgeuse – carry Arabic names, a reminder that the language of astronomy itself was shaped in Baghdad and Cordoba.

A millennium later, the Gulf is once again looking to the skies. But the goal is no longer navigation by starlight. It is sovereignty in orbit. And nowhere is that clearer than in the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

The region’s two largest economies are pouring billions into space, but along strikingly different paths. Anchored in ambitious national agendas – the UAE’s National Space Strategy 2030 and Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 – a new Gulf space race is underway. One bets on vertical integration and supply chain control; the other, on payloads and analytics-first services.

The prize is the same: the ability to design, build, and operate space assets without dependence on foreign suppliers.

The obstacles are also shared: scarce engineering talent, immense capital requirements, and the unresolved question of whether Gulf states will collaborate or compete for a foothold beyond Earth’s atmosphere.

This article explores why sovereignty in space matters, the divergent bets of the UAE and Saudi Arabia, the players shaping the race, and whether these efforts will coalesce into a regional ecosystem – or remain a contest for supremacy.

Many thanks to Hamdullah Mohib, CEO of Orbitworks (Marlan Space) in the UAE, and Ahmed Alzubairi, founder & CEO of Saudi-based SARsatX, for sharing their insights and experience for this piece.

At first glance, it’s fair to question why the Gulf is pouring billions into rockets and satellites instead of doubling down on more grounded, pardon the pun, and tangible bets. Economic diversification doesn’t inherently require leaving Earth’s atmosphere after all.

The answer lies less in growth for its own sake and more in how the UAE and Saudi Arabia define self-reliance and sovereignty, two of the buzziest buzzwords working overtime from Dubai to Riyadh.

For both governments, the imperative is to eliminate strategic dependencies, whether in food, energy, AI, or space, that could leave them exposed to external pressure.

Orbitworks CEO Hamdullah Mohib puts it plainly: “Traditionally a country like the UAE would look at the capability you want, and that capability is then provided by a Western or Eastern company. You become a user of their system. What we’re trying to change is the ability to build that capability here.”

Space becomes the next logical frontier in this calculus precisely because its reach is so wide: it underpins communications, logistics, defence, environmental monitoring, and data security. To remain merely a consumer of these services would mean outsourcing core elements of national resilience.

That vulnerability also carries a heavy price tag. Ahmed Alzubairi of SARsatX points out that Saudi Arabia spends more than $500 million each year just on purchasing satellite imagery from abroad, a spend that triggers a trifecta of concerning consequences: money flowing out of the economy, control ceded to external suppliers, and a critical weakness in times of geopolitical tension. “If we can launch our own satellites, we can capture that demand – and not only save money, but keep control of valuable data at home,” he says.

There is also a prestige dimension to these efforts. Emirati astronauts aboard the ISS, Saudi Arabia’s announcements of lunar missions, and the UAE’s high-profile Mars probe all generate national pride and global headlines. Plans for spaceports and splashy press events play well at home and abroad. But it would be a mistake to dismiss these milestones as vanity projects. They belie a more complex, deliberate strategy unfolding beneath the surface.

For both the UAE and Saudi, space is not primarily about prestige projects like planting flags on the Moon, or indulging in a throwback to Cold War–era chest-thumping.

Rather, the ambition is more muted, if no less challenging or audacious, focused on embedding space infrastructure into the fabric of their economies: securing resilience in communications, navigation, data, and defence, while cultivating industries that can operate at the frontier of global technology.

Yet achieving true sovereignty in orbit is not simply a matter of political will or capital, it demands scarce human expertise, advanced supply chains, and the patience for decades-long bets.

“Just to illustrate with satellites alone: you have subsystems like batteries and power units, onboard computers, payloads, dozens of components. Localising all of that is going to be a multi-year, if not multi-decade, effort,” Mohib cautions.

This is not an appraisal of whether the pursuit of space sovereignty makes sense in cost-benefit terms – we’ll leave that to McKinsey.

The focus here is that, while the ambition of both the UAE and Saudi Arabia is shared, the pathways are far from identical. Achieving true autonomy in orbit requires choices: which technologies to prioritise, which parts of the value chain to localise first, and where to lean on external partners.

This is where the UAE and Saudi narratives begin to diverge. Each is carving its own entry point into the space economy, selecting distinct battles in order to jumpstart a domestic ecosystem.

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