From Gaza to Mars: Palestinian engineer behind helicopter flight over Red Planet



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BEIT HANOUN, Gaza Strip – An electronics engineer from Gaza, Loay Elbasyouni, had worked with the NASA team that made history this month by launching an experimental helicopter from the surface of Mars.

But he says a potential expedition to his hometown in the Gaza Strip, where posters celebrate his achievement, feels even further away because of Israeli and Egyptian restrictions.

“When you deal with electrons and technology, you can calculate things and know their way,” he told The Associated Press in a video interview from his home in Los Angeles. “When you deal with people and politics, you don’t know where things can go.”

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The 42-year-old man himself made an astonishing journey from the difficult town of Beit Hanoun, near the heavily guarded Israeli border, to the US Space Agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, where he worked as a contractor to help design the Ingenuity helicopter.

He left Gaza in 1998 to study in the United States and only returned once, for a brief visit in 2000 before the Second Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, which began at the end of that year. Some 1,000 Israelis and 6,000 Palestinians were killed in the onslaught of Palestinian suicide and other terrorist attacks, and the Israeli military operations that followed.

The fighting has been particularly intense in and around border towns like Beit Hanoun. Elbasyouni says Israeli military tanks bulldozed his father’s orchards four times.

Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, but two years later the Islamist terrorist group Hamas seized power from rival Palestinian forces. Since then, Israel and Egypt have maintained a blockade that strictly limits the movement of people and goods in and out of the narrow coastal strip, which is home to more than 2 million Palestinians. Israel says the blockade is vital in preventing Hamas, which seeks to destroy Israel, from importing arms.

Abdelwahab Elbasyouni, an uncle of Loay Elbasyouni, a space engineer who was part of the NASA team that made history this month by launching an experimental helicopter from the surface of Mars, stands on the porch of the House decorated in homage to him, where Loay’s family lived in Beit Hanoun, Gaza Strip, April 26, 2021 (Adel Hana / AP)

As Gaza went through crisis after crisis, Elbasyouni continued his education in the United States.

He struggled to afford tuition at the University of Kentucky, especially after the family farm was bulldozed. At one point, he said he worked over 90 hours a week at a Subway sandwich shop to make ends meet. He eventually transferred to the University of Louisville, where he obtained a bachelor’s and master’s degree in electrical engineering.

In 2012, he was hired by a tech company that developed electric planes. Two years later, the company was hired by NASA for the helicopter project on Mars, and Elbasyouni was promoted to chief electronic engineer.

He spent six years working alongside other NASA scientists to develop the helicopter’s propulsion system, controller, and other key components.

The robotic helicopter he developed hitchhiked to Mars on the Perseverance rover, which was launched into space by a rocket in July 2020. He said his feelings were “indescribable” when he took it. seen landing on the surface of the Red Planet in February. .

Elbasyouni followed every moment of the expedition and nervously waited for any signal that the helicopter was working once it was launched. When the first images reached Earth showing the helicopter flying, “I screamed in the middle of the night and woke everyone in the building,” he said.

It was a triumph hailed as a Wright Brothers moment in the history of flight. Since then, Elbasyouni has performed numerous television interviews with Western and Arab media and has become a hero of his hometown of Beit Hanoun.

But he says he’s unlikely to be going anytime soon due to travel restrictions.

If he wanted to visit, he would have to go through Jordan or Egypt, as Israel does not allow Gazans in or out of its international airport.

In Jordan, he would have to wait for a special shuttle to take him from the Allenby Bridge crossing the West Bank and Israel under Israeli control to the Erez crossing point with Gaza. The irregular shuttle only runs every few days. Each direction would require an Israeli permit, a process that can be complicated, lengthy and uncertain.

Permits to exit Gaza are usually only granted to patients seeking life-saving medical treatment or to a small number of businessmen.

His other option would be to go through Egypt and try to enter Gaza through the Rafah crossing, which only opens sporadically and can be closed for months at a time. Egypt imposes its own restrictions on Palestinians, who must apply for travel permits and sometimes pay exorbitant fees to stand in line.

He says his father, who retired as a surgeon in 2012 and now lives in Germany, traveled to Gaza via Egypt in 2019 and was stranded there for seven months before leaving via Israel.

A full-size model of the Ingenuity helicopter on display to media at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. On February 17, 2021 (Damian Dovarganes / AP)

Elbasyouni points out that most Americans, including space engineers, only get two or three weeks off a year. “If you go (to Gaza) you may get stuck and lose your job,” he said.

Restrictions on all sides have been tightened since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic but predate it well.

Israel says they are needed to prevent terrorist groups from Gaza from bringing weapons and war materials into the Palestinian coastal enclave. Hamas has fought three wars with Israel and is considered a terrorist group by Israel and Western countries. He launched tens of thousands of rockets targeting Israeli towns.

COGAT, the Israeli military body responsible for coordinating civil affairs in the West Bank and Gaza, says it takes individual requests into account and allows travel for humanitarian cases. Each request, she said, is subject to “a thorough review involving all relevant professional offices and subject to security considerations.”

Critics of the blockade say it amounts to collective punishment, with generations of Gazans confined to a vast open-air prison.

Gisha, an Israeli rights group that closely follows the closures and advocates for freedom of movement, says the “severe and sweeping restrictions” mean that “future scientists, entrepreneurs and innovators in Gaza are barred from accessing educational and professional opportunities that can change life in the outdoors. the band.”

Despite the political situation, Elbasyouni says there are still opportunities for Palestinian entrepreneurs and innovators, even in Gaza, and he hopes he can inspire young Palestinians.

“Being part of this project in the service of humanity is a great pride,” he said.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.



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