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UAE Prepares To Launch Two Satellites: Thuraya-2 And MBZ-SAT
HH Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum chaired the first meeting of the Supreme Space Council yesterday.
HH Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Deputy Prime Minister of the UAE, chaired the first meeting of the Supreme Space Council in Dubai on December 16, 2024. The session highlighted the UAE’s ambitious space plans and took stock of the sector’s economic progress.
The council emphasized the growing role of private companies in advancing space technologies, noting that their contributions are now equal to that of the public sector. Members also praised initiatives like the Space Economic Zones Programme, which are designed to fuel innovation and investment in the space industry.
خلال ترؤسنا الاجتماع الأول للمجلس الأعلى للفضاء، بحثنا الاستثمارات الوطنية والمشاريع المقبلة في قطاع الفضاء والذي يشهد تطوراً مستمراً… وجددنا التزامنا بدعم ومواصلة تنفيذ برامج طموحة لاستكشاف الفضاء الخارجي حيث وصل حجم الاستثمارات في هذا القطاع إلى 40 مليار درهم خلال السنوات… pic.twitter.com/etJ33OnuSu
— Hamdan bin Mohammed (@HamdanMohammed) December 16, 2024
Discussing the UAE’s space journey, HH Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum remarked, “The national space sector continues to grow and advance, and we take immense pride in the remarkable achievements we have accomplished over the years”.
Sheikh Hamdan also received updates on two upcoming satellite projects: Thuraya-2 and MBZ-SAT. Thuraya-2, developed by Space42, is slated for launch this December. Meanwhile, the MBZ-SAT, created by the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC), will soon follow. MBRSC, a major driver of the UAE National Space Programme, continues to lead the nation’s space-related developments.
Space42 took the opportunity to showcase its advancements, including ongoing collaborations between public and private entities. The company also outlined strategies to promote innovation, boost revenue streams, and create new opportunities for growth in the sector.
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The UAE’s current projects build on a growing legacy of space exploration. Back in 2020, the nation made headlines with its Mars mission, successfully sending a probe into the planet’s orbit in 2021. This mission, which is now in its second phase as of June 2024, has been collecting critical data to develop a comprehensive diurnal image of Mars.
The UAE also ventured into lunar exploration with an unmanned mission aimed at studying untouched regions of the Moon’s surface. While the probe ultimately crashed during its landing attempt after communication was lost seconds before touchdown, the effort represented a significant step in the country’s exploration ambitions.
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NVIDIA Puts GPT-5.5 Codex In Hands Of 10,000 Staff
The chipmaker has significantly expanded OpenAI’s latest model across teams from engineering to HR under tight internal controls.
NVIDIA has started rolling out OpenAI’s GPT-5.5 model through the Codex coding agent to more than 10,000 employees, extending the tool well beyond software teams and into core business functions.
The deployment covers engineering, product, legal, marketing, finance, sales, HR, operations and developer programs. Staff are using Codex for coding, internal research and routine knowledge work as companies test whether AI agents can move from demos to daily use.
GPT-5.5 is running on NVIDIA’s GB200 NVL72 rack-scale systems, linking OpenAI’s newest model directly to the chipmaker’s latest infrastructure push. NVIDIA said the systems cut cost per million tokens by 35 times and raise token output per second per megawatt by 50 times versus earlier generations.
Inside the company, it says the effects are immediate. Debugging work that once took days is being finished in hours and experiments across large codebases that used to stretch over weeks are now handled overnight. Teams are also building features from natural-language prompts with fewer failed runs.
In a company-wide note urging staff to adopt the tool, CEO Jensen Huang wrote: “Let’s jump to lightspeed. Welcome to the age of AI.”
Security remains central to the rollout. Codex can connect through Secure Shell to approved cloud virtual machines, allowing agents to work with company data without moving it outside approved environments. NVIDIA said it assigned cloud VMs to employees so agents run in isolated sandboxes with full audit trails.
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The company added that the setup uses a zero-data-retention policy. Access to production systems is read-only through command-line tools and internal automation layers.
The move also highlights NVIDIA’s long relationship with OpenAI. NVIDIA said the partnership began in 2016, when Huang personally delivered the first DGX-1 AI supercomputer to OpenAI’s San Francisco office.
The two companies have since worked across hardware and model deployment. NVIDIA also said OpenAI plans to deploy more than 10 gigawatts of NVIDIA systems for future AI infrastructure.
For Gulf markets pouring money into sovereign AI and enterprise automation, the signal is clear: internal AI agents are moving from pilot phase to standard tooling.
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