Crown Prince Foundation sends 4 more Jordanian students to NASA

AMMAN — The Crown Prince Foundation (CPF) on Saturday announced the admission of four new students at NASA’s Ames Research Centre in the US for training, raising the total number of Jordanian students  at the institution to 12. 

The newly admitted students are Mohammad Salti from the University of Jordan, Mohi Al Deen Zaatar from the Princess Sumaya University for Technology, Abdul Rahman Bdeir from the German-Jordanian University and Maha Afif from the Jordan University for Science and Technology, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

As NASA’s first partnership with an Arab nation, this internship initiative, launched by HRH Crown Prince Hussein in 2014, provides Jordan’s top engineering students from all Jordanian universities with the opportunity to conduct practical, hands-on research at NASA’s Ames Research Centre in California. 

The students will develop, master and apply their skills in aeronautics and space engineering, under the guidance of NASA experts over the course of 10 weeks, according to the CPF’s website. 

CPF CEO Omar Masarweh said that the internship is the result of Prince Hussein’s keenness to provide opportunities for young Jordanians to receive practical and scientific expertise at the best international institutions, Petra reported.

Terms and conditions to apply for this initiative stipulate that students need to have a creative engineering graduation project in their fourth or fifth year of university in Jordan, with an accumulative average of not less than 90 per cent.

Students should also present a recommendation letter from their instructors and a detailed presentation of their projects and implementation phases, before joining the training with a NASA supervisor who will co-implement the project. 

The Masar initiative, which aims to inspire and address Jordanian youth’s passion for innovation in space technology,  was inspired by the Kingdom’s first NASA interns’ research and interest in nanosatellite technology to establish the CubeSat program and its design of “JY1-SAT”, Jordan’s first satellite, according to www.cpf.jo. 

The satellite’s name, “JY1-SAT”, was chosen in memory of His Majesty the late King Hussein, who held the radio call sign of JY1. 

The first batch of interns have now become the programme’s mentors and advisors, guiding volunteer engineering students in their exploration of satellite engineering through training, research and practical hands-on experience that will result in the JY1-SAT’s launch into space.