Double Moon

As part of the United Arab Emirates’ space exploration agenda, the UAE launched the Mars Mission and sent a probe to the Red Planet on 19 July 2020. The probe was set to arrive on Mars on 9 February 2021 and – as this was to be the first time that an Arab country had ever arrived on Mars – the UAE Government wanted to make sure that everyone in the world was watching.

Although not many people know this, Mars has two moons – Phobos and Deimos. These moons were in the probe’s line of sight during its arrival, so we decided to bring them to Earth to make the people of the UAE feel as if they were in space. Using super-realistic sky mapping projection technology that had never before been seen in the Middle East, two giant 70-metre cranes and a 40-metre holo screen, we projected two exact replicas of the Mars moons onto the Dubai sky. The screen and the cranes were invisible at night, and the moons – which were visible for miles – looked incredibly realistic. Social media picked up on them quickly. Within a few hours, the videos had taken the internet by storm. Some social media users even claimed that the end of the world was nigh, and this ensured that the media covered the ‘Double Moon’ phenomenon. After the buzz built up, we made a government announcement via social media and to the press revealing that the phenomenon was a projection of the Mars moons that were visible to the UAE’s probe in the moments before its arrival. In the address, a government official invited everyone to tune into our live stream and watch the UAE arrive on the Red Planet.