The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has announced its earthshaking goal of sending history's first Muslim spacecraft towards Mars in 2021.

The stunning declaration was made by the Emirate of Dubai, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. He said the Muslim Mars mission will prove the Arab world remains still capable of delivering scientific contributions to humanity despite the many conflicts in the Middle East.

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"Our region is a region of civilization," said Al Maktoum. "Our destiny is, once again, to explore, to create, to build and to civilize."

He said his country chose the mammoth challenge of reaching Mars because it inspires and motivates. It is an outlook similar to that of the late U.S. President John F. Kennedy whose challenge made in 1960 that the USA land a man on the Moon before the end of the 1960s inspired the USA to dominate the world's space industry.

"The moment we stop taking on such challenges is the moment we stop moving forward," Al Maktoum said.

The announcement of the Muslim Mars mission is a triumph for the UAE, which has been urging Arab League nations to organize a pan-Arab space agency similar to the European Space Agency and NASA to lead the Muslim world into outer space.

Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, President of the UAE and Ruler of Abu Dhabi, said the Mars mission "represents the Islamic world's entry into the era of space exploration."

The Mars mission will be an incredibly risky one even for an unmanned spacecraft given the complex technologies, technical skills and massive costs involved.  The UAE has no previous experience in rocketry and has never before launched a spacecraft into space.

The mission seems a gamble verging on the reckless. The world's overall success rate in Mars missions since the 1960s is less than 50-50. NASA has the best success rate at 70 percent.

The UAE said its unmanned probe will take nine months to reach the Red Planet. The misison will make the UAE one of only nine countries with space programs directed at Mars. The as yet unnamed probe will have to travel 60 million kilometers to reach Mars.

UAE officials did not mention specific scientific goals for the probe but did, however, say the Mars mission aims to advance human knowledge and develop Emirati human capital and economy.

The UAE, which consists of seven emirates, noted that its investments in space technologies has exceeded US$5.4 billion. This amount includes investments in satellite data, mobile satellite communications and earth mapping and observation, but none in building satellites or launch vehicles.