Original subtitles

I was born in 1969.

A few days after a man walked on the moon.

The USSR and the US were fighting over earth and sky.

Space and science reigned.

In any case that's how I imagined it.

I was born in 1969.

A few weeks after a man walked on the moon.

The time of revolutions and militancy

of dreaming and pursuing those dreams.

That's how the story came to us.

First, we saw the image of a rocket.

Not just any rocket

a rocket with the colors of the Lebanese flag.

Did the Lebanese dream one day of conquering space?

Impossible to believe.

At the beginning of the 60's

a small group of students from Haigazian University

led by Manoug Manougian a mathematics professor

launched rockets into the Lebanese sky.

They produced the first rocket in Middle East.

Oddly we had never heard anything about their story.

It is like a secret hidden, forgotten story.

The Strange Tale of the Lebanese Space Race

Under "Lebanese rocket"

this is what we get.

And if we typed "rocket"

or "conquest of space"?

It's not exactly the same thing!

And no trace of our rocket.

At the University where this project started

the Armenian Haigazian University we search through the archives.

We find several editions of Armenian newspapers of the time

but we can't decipher them.

We ask a student to translate them for us.

There aren't many details.

But there are some dates

of relatively successful rocket launches

that seem to soar higher and higher

going gradually from 12 km to more than 450 and eventually 600 km!

It is hard for us to believe.

Even the student is surprised.

So it was not a joke!

We find few images of the rockets.

In the University's yearbook from the 60's

a surreal photograph.

Manoug Manougian

founder of the space project that's him.

Over there, some of the students who worked with him on the project:

Garabed Basmadjian

Ham par Karageozian

Hrair Antablian

Simon Abrahamian, John Tilkian

Jean-Jacques Gubekian Hrair Sahagian...

These faces, these gazes...

These young students are maybe the children

of Armenian orphans who by the thousands, in 1915, fled Turkey

crossed the desert

settled in Lebanon after their community's genocide.

Gradually, they integrated political and cultural life

becoming one of Lebanon's most important communities.

And now a new finding:

they dreamt of a rocket and built it!

We search.

In dailies and newspapers.

Indeed the Lebanese space project captivated front pages often.

It seems serious, ambitious

totally in synch with the research of the time.

At the outset of the 1960s while NASA in the United States

was readying to send Apollo its first rocket, into space

and the USSR, to launch its first manned spaceflight

with Yuri Gagarin

Manougian and the students of the modest Haigazian College

began exploring spacecraft propulsion.

What was this wild challenge for such a small country?

How is it possible that we've never heard about it?

Why hasn't anyone ever told us their story?

Stranger still, is the fact that images of the rockets

were never part of our collective imaginary

but absent from the nostalgic rosier of Beirut's 1960s

the so-called Switzerland of the Middle East and its Dolce Vita.

This absence surprised us.

How can we forget Harry Koundakjian's impressive images

we had first come across at the Arab Image Foundation?

There are only about ten.

When Harry left Lebanon

he might have taken the others with him.

We find other photographs that yet need to be indexed

like photographer Assaad Jradi's images.

2, 4, 6, 8, 10...

Are these the only images?

Thank God, we have these ones.

I'm from Khayzaran, North of Saida.

I had important archives.

When Israel occupied the town my brothers burned half of them.

Out of fear.

When did you last see this photo?

About...

50 years ago.

Maybe 60.

You see, that's it, rocket number 4.

Look at this crowd...

Can you see Harry?

I'm looking for him.

I'm looking for all of them.

That's a cameraman filming for the news.

Do you remember anyone?

No, I don't know.

I look at this photo and I think: "What an idiot!"

I photographed the moving smoke and not the rocket.

But it's artful.

Artful would be to show at least part of the rocket.

But I cut it off.

This one is perfect.

This is the good picture this is the one.

The others can't work.

This one is the one for the cover.

This one or the other one.

Of course, we should crop it.

So there might be news footage of the rocket launches.

Full of hope, we head to the Lebanese National Cinema Center's archives.

We'd never been to the Center

even though several of our 35mm films are kept there.

We're received by Zafer Azar

a critic, writer and cinephile

who's in charge of printed documentation of Lebanese cinema.

But the head of the film archives isn't there.

He resigned.

And considering the state of the site, we understand why!

Unknown.

Look at this.

It's stupid.

It's a crime.

Some of the films are originals with out copy.

Unique documents that can no longer be found.

There are old films I remember them well.

There are newsreels.

- All those are newsreels? - Yes.

They were shown in movie theaters.

Before the film.

It was before the war.

We were young, we loved cinema. That's how it starts.

We would see this at the movies.

It's the same period.

The 60's.

These reels are newsreels?

Perhaps, we have to look inside.

We finally come across some current events footage from the 1960s.

But our joy is cut short...

What about our own films?

Around The Pink House

They are still here.

Manougian doesn't seem to have forgotten about this adventure.

Today, a professor at University of South Florida's math dept.

Which he chaired for 10 years

he dedicates a significant part of his website to the space project.

Another headline draws our attention:

"Peace through education".

To Manoug, science and education

are a life mission.

The hopes that transpire from all this

prompt us to board a plane for Tampa.

Manoug is moved by our interest.

He's been waiting to share this since he left the Arab world

more than 45 years ago.

Rockets are his life's passion.

As a young child in Jerusalem where he was born

at the St. George school

he used to draw rockets on his desk.

His dream could come true only once he arrived in Lebanon, at Haigazian.

Even the choice of Tampa was dictated to him by Jules Verne.

Yes, Jules Verne!

In "From the Earth to the Moon" Verne sets his rocket launch there

in Tampa.

He discovered a century before NASA

that it affords the best latitude for that purpose.

How did he know?

Manoug still can't explain it.

So when he received the invitation to teach in Tam pa

he saw it as a sign.

On the table we find an unexpected treasure:

the first rockets the very small ones

and also the Cedars: Cedar 2A, Cedar 2B, C, 3...

up until Cedar 8.

From the smallest to the largest

photographs, articles loads of films.

Manoug saved everything.

For over 50 years, carefully.

We're overwhelmed.

And Manoug gives us his treasure.

He longs for us to tell this story

that is gradually coming together.

To say: We'd love to fly rockets in the sky.

To say: What do we need to do that? Propellant?

We don't have any.

So let's make it.

The rocket? We build it.

We make bigger rockets launch them higher and higher...

To dream and believe it is possible.

To want to do it and do it.

To say: I want to share this dream of space with others.

Manoug and his students were driven by this.

The world then was a world of possibilities.

In any case that's how we imagine it.

Soon the project of conquering space will be shared by another man.

I met Manougian

at a hotel owned by a friend of mine.

He called Manoug and said:

"I want you to meet my friend

a young lieutenant specialized in ballistics."

Manoug asked me to work with the Haigazian's students

who had begun their experiments.

The students had pooled their meager savings.

I don't even know if the University chipped in.

They used pipes found in shops

which did not exceed 5 or 6 inches.

They were restricted by the size.

If I had not joined them at that point

they'd probably have come up against financial problems.

But also problems arising from the fact that some products

made in France or in the US

were only available to the army.

Their sale to other users was prohibited.

Lt. Wehbe, in charge of overseeing Manoug's enthusiasm for ballistics

develops a passion for the Lebanese rocket.

The army sends him to Cape Canaveral where he receives training.

Then he attends test launches

of a 10-meter-French rocket in the Algerian desert.

When he returns he and Manoug share a goal:

to make the rocket bigger.

He knows it's possible.

The problem is the rocket's main part:

the tubes available on the market are too small.

The rocket they draw is to be built at the army factory.

All cooperate:

the students of Haigazian army mechanics

and Pierre Mourad professor at the American University

who is to guarantee its solidity.

It's now a collective effort.

The space project featured on front news.

"The boys and their rockets" were a good story.

"Behold the Lebanese rocket! The Lebanese rocket's future"

"Bravo to the Cedars!"

"Cedar 3, total success"

"Moment of pride for the Association of Spacecraft Studies"

"Yesterday, the Cedar took flight".

The fervor around the Cedar emerges in the era of the great Arab dream

that inspires people to shape their own destiny.

Pan-Arabism is steered by Egyptian president Abdel Nasser

with the creation of the United Arab Republic

which unites Egypt and Syria.

It generates internal conflicts in Lebanon

and almost a civil war in 1958.

One side of the population has a pro-western ideology

and the other side endorses Nasser's Arab nationalism.

To block the influence of the USSR that supports Nasser

15,000 American marines land in Lebanon.

A few months later the new President Chehab

strives to rebuild state and nation.

The space research that began just after the 1958 conflict

was used to unite a country

that had difficulty considering itself a nation.

The rockets were turned into symbols.

For Manoug, it was something else.

He dreamt of mathematical teaching and space exploration.

Students came from Jerusalem

Jordan, Syria Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon...

And their project was contemporary with the research of those times.

Yet all these images have lapsed from the collective imagination.

History has erased them.

It was recorded without them.

The man who made most of the images of this space adventure

is Harry Koundakjian, one of the first Lebanese photojournalists.

The first photographs of the baby rockets are his.

He was in Sannine as well.

Harry was there for all the launches:

Cedar 2B, Cedar 2C Cedar 3 and 4...

The first photos published by L'orient and Al Jarida were his.

Images that adorned front-pages with the success of the project...

still Harry's.

"Harry the Horse"

traveled the world witnessed revolutions

and wars, met celebrities.

The images of the 60's and 70's he shows us

are imbued with the spirit of the era.

They are moving and linked to us.

They resonate within us.

While those of the rockets

have no trace in our imagination.

What is history's memory?

Harry is happy to hear that Manoug kept traces of his photographs.

Like many photographers

he lost most of his negatives during the civil wars.

He had not seen the images

of these rockets for ages.

When you read in the eyes of these youngsters

how happy they are with their project and its success

you're so proud of them.

You can never forget it.

It's amazing how this project, in an Armenian university, evolves.

It is endowed with a spaceport in the heights of Dbayeh.

The army is participating in it

the State, subsidizing it.

Still, it is at Haigazian University's lab

that students continue mixing fuel

fabricating it from scratch with their own hands.

It's seems even more unbelievable today

that Rev. John Markarian, head of the Protestant university he founded

did not halt the momentum that went beyond them.

Now 93 years old John lives in Pittsion, Pennsylvania

with Inge, whom he met in Beirut where he lived for over 25 years.

We didn't go wrong with the measurements

but with the trajectory.

We took an ordinary map

to study our position and the rocket's trajectory.

And we noticed that the South of Cyprus

was on the same level as Syria.

From Dbayeh

if we had launched the rocket straight

it would have fallen in Cyprus.

So we decided to deviate it slightly.

But the degree of deviation

was obviously not enough.

We received a letter from our Ambassador in Cyprus, Ghossein

saying that the British Ambassador had called him

about a rocket launched from Lebanon which had fallen near a boat.

That could have sparked a catastrophe.

At that time, in Lebanon

No radar was capable of following a rocket at that speed and distance.

When I was in England, I trained on the Decca Navigator System

which used transmissions from different fixed stations.

The resulting triangulation of pulse frequencies and phases

enabled us to track and locate a boat.

So I had the idea

to use the same model to track the rocket.

And this is what we did.

Some Arab scientists who founded the Association for Spacecraft Studies

began launching rockets

that fell a bit too close to Cyprus

triggering an international outcry.

Cyprus protested at the UN

the UK expressed concern

and neighboring countries panicked.

Things verged on a diplomatic crisis.

Joseph Sfeir was in charge of recording and analyzing

the rocket's trajectory.

An engineer specialized in telecommunications

he adapted PAUSECAM to Lebanon

invented the Lebanese Central Bank security codes

placed radars on tankers from Famagusia to the Red Sea

and participated in the construction of this cable car.

I made this.

The batteries were here.

Then the receivers and here is the transmitter.

Here, I'm connecting them.

The idea was to put in a small satellite.

Before us, the Americans had sent Oscar 1 and Oscar 2 for Ham Radio.

But the army was giving them the rocket.

We'd have made the rocket and the satellites ourselves.

A satellite.

Joseph was dreaming of that.

Manoug too

as well as sending a man and before that, a mouse

lodged in the head of the rocket to reach the stratosphere.

Mickey the mouse had been prepared for the trip

but Manoug's wife, an animal-lover stood against it,

thus saving Mickey's life.

It may seem surreal

but we have to delve back to the context of the time

and the obsession to conquer space that had reached all the region.

"Space fever" spread from Haigazian

to the prestigious American University of Beirut.

For scientific purposes the students there built Hannibal

the first liquid-propelled rocket in the Arab world.

Unfortunately, it ended in failure.

There were others.

Students of the El Hoda school

in Beirut's southern suburb Shiyyah, also made rockets.

A journalist in "The Adventurer" reported enthusiastically

on the eve of the launch of the small El Hoda 2

by four teenagers between the ages of 13 and 15

led by their teacher, Mr. Maalouf.

The first Hoda rocket had soared as high as 15 m.

The journalist writes excitedly:

"If these four young people can build rockets"

so can every student in every Arab country

"even if these dreams are achieved outside the realm of science!"

Other countries became interested in rockets.

For Egypt and Israel who were at open war

space research had military goals

rather than scientific ones.

The great concern worldwide at the time

was the nuclear arms race.

Everyone wanted a bomb.

Egypt received support from the USSR Israel from France and Iran.

Some 250 German technicians were at work in Egypt.

Some had collaborated with Von Braun under the Nazi regime

before he fled to the US and founded NASA.

In 1962

after the Egyptian program began its rocket tests

Israel became fearful initiating Operation Damocles:

targeted attacks, letter bombs

and death threats to German scientists who worked for Nasser.

The operation was led by a spy Wolfgang Lotz

who infiltrated the Egyptian program and sabotaged it.

He was arrested and tried by Egyptian authorities in 1965

and handed over to Israel with his wife

after the June '67 War

against 5,000 Egyptian prisoners 9 of whom were army generals.

He was known as "the Champagne Spy".

The Middle-East of the time was an active hub

of espionage and counterespionage.

Scrutinizing, recruiting gleaning information...

While Manoug and his students pursue their research

intrigue is widespread in Lebanon.

Spies rub shoulders at hotel bars hang around embassies

slip into the offices of newspaper editors or universities.

All kinds of spies

on the payroll of the US the USSR, or anti-imperialism.

At the time of the Cold War

the Middle East was a battleground between East and West blocs.

It was a time when revolutionary movements were linked

when talk was about revolutions not causes.

It was also a time when, in spite of differences

science and the conquest of space

were a stage to compete, emulate and share of the same temporality.

In any case, that was the fantasy.

Hampar Karageozian a brilliant chemistry student

very involved in the Rocket project

emerges as a hero.

The accident marks the end of the carefree climate.

The Haigazian lab doors are sealed

all explosive materials are banned.

There is nothing left on campus.

In the absence of Manoug the army takes over the project.

Centralizing the rocket construction as well as fuel preparation.

Things change.

The launches that once drew huge crowds

become more private

with less press coverage

and a military audience.

The army takes over little by little.

Then in 1964

Manoug returns with his graduate degree.

A country that wants to build rockets

will not be satisfied with mere fireworks.

There was a military objective behind all this.

We had something like a committee

working to transform the rocket into a weapon.

But in front of Manoug Manougian Pierre Mourad or Joseph Sfeir

we pretended to be doing scientific experiments.

To show the people we could produce rockets.

What can you tell a civilian?

Say something to Pierre and the whole university knows about it.

Say it to Joseph Sfeir and the whole area of Jounieh knows about it.

So, officially we pretended to conduct experiments.

Scientific experiments.

To all appearances we were producing rockets.

But from the inside, we the army officers wanted things to evolve.

We wanted not a three-siage but a two-siage rocket

with one of them full of explosives.

We had a dream

of turning this rocket

into a weapon.

But before we could do so

what was to happen happened.

Then the project stopped.

I didn't attend the meeting, I don't know if it was a threat or a request.

But if the Lebanese army hurried up and wrote a letter

saying that come October all the rocket experiments had to stop

obviously someone was forcing them.

President Chehab asked us to stop the project.

I knew him personally.

He was our neighbor in Jounieh I knew his nephews.

So I asked him:

"Mr. President why are we stopping the project?"

"We're not a burden to the State and we're bringing fame to the country."

He said: "I know, Joseph but we've been asked to stop."

I asked: "By whom? From the North?"

He said: "From the North the South and faraway."

And then...

and then, oddly enough... oblivion.

Broadcasting from Radio Van, I welcome you via Lebanese frequencies

or via internet for international listeners.

Today, we'll talk about a scientific event that occurred in the 60's

and of which many of us are unaware.

Most people are surprised to learn

that the Haigazian University and the Lebanese army

had a space program to launch rockets.

And that Lebanese and Armenian Lebanese

were doggedly working on this project.

We'd like to ask our listeners for any information on the project...

Not just information. If you have any recollections...

If you've seen or heard anything...

if you were just passing by and saw a rocket...

If someone told you about this story... This is important to us.

Let us repeat to our dear listeners

if you remember something about this project

if you want to know more

call us at the following number: 01 24 11 99

or 01 26 76 57.

We waited and hoped along time

but no one ever responded to the call sent out on Radio Van.

No one rem embers the rocket's story then?

No one shares a common memory of a rocket launch?

No one got married broke up with a fiancé, took an exam

experienced anything important on the same day

and could recall:

"That was the day the Cedar 4 was launched" or "the Cedar 6"?

When they speak of it, no... it doesn't ring a bell for most people.

As for our generation they stare at us incredulous

as if this event, this document

was a piece of fiction we've made up for fun.

It's like a secret history

buried in the collective imagination

a repressed thing set apart and never mentioned

even in history books.

Perhaps because most of the players in the project

have left Lebanon

like a big part of the Armenian community.

Perhaps because most of the archives have disappeared.

They reached us only thanks to one man, Manoug, who saved everything

thousands of km from Lebanon.

Might this also be due to the Lebanese civil wars

which took with them swathes of memories of the past

or even before a consequence of the June 1967 War

between Israeli and Arab armies.

The space program was halted sometime after the war of June 1967.

The Arab defeat and the loss of territories

like Jerusalem and the Golan heights

had a very significant impact on the entire region.

Egyptian president Abdel Nasser, stepped down

and then returned under street pressure.

It's the end of a certain idea of the pan-Arab project.

The shattering of a vision: an alternative and modernist utopia

that promised to transform our region and the world.

And what has changed the most with the war of 1967

is the image we have of ourselves.

We were born in 1969

children of that disenchanted generation

that felt the loss of agency of its own fate.

It was harder to envision the future.

Dreaming was confiscated.

The history of the Lebanese space project seems inconceivable today.

As ii we were severed from that possibility

as if we couldn't identify with it

forgetting it

repressing it from both individual and collective memory.

Oblivion. The invisible.

We've already faced it.

It led us to make images in the aftermath of the Lebanese civil wars.

Amnesia...

The interrogation about how History is fabricated and written...

Which History is to be shared?

What remains on the rocket launch sites in Dbayeh?

Monuments were raised along the way by the armies that passed through

invading then withdrawing from Lebanon.

Parts of history are still tangible to us.

But no monument or commemorative stone testifies to the rockets

with the following words:

"From this plateau in Dbayeh

Lebanon launched in 1961 the first rocket of the Arab world."

Neither stone nor monument?

You can see it on this image.

Can you see the tip on the photo?

Yes, but it's rather like that in fact.

Anyhow, the proportions are good.

What about...

the welding of the ailerons?

What do you think about the welding and finishing?

It's up to you.

You can decide to follow the photo.

Or you can try to slightly improve things.

It's up to you.

The shape will be more like this.

I'd like Jana to tell me what authorizations we need

I'd like Jana to tell me what authorizations we need

to be allowed to reproduce the rocket.

Even if we're just building a mock one

which cannot be launched.

What authorizations do we need to rebuild it?

To assemble it in our factory

put it on a truck and get it out in the streets.

When you're building it inside the factory

before it gets out nothing can happen, right?

The guy who is now producing the screw, the pivot

he's only working on separate pieces.

But when you begin to assemble?

You're afraid?

Of course, I am.

Not for the rocket.

I don't want them to close my factory!

I don't care about the rocket!

The other problem is with the...

The countries around.

This is why they have to know that it's a work of art.

You could be hiding behind it preparing something.

I don't think they'll really do anything.

No, but you'll be surrounded by cameras

Smile! You're being filmed!

And your phone will emit weird sounds...

That's reassuring!

Mr. Minister, for our project we are reproducing a rocket

that we'll install close to your office.

What authorizations should we have?

Can it be a problem? Whom should we inform?

As you know, rockets as missiles

are not a simple thing in Lebanon.

We've had enough rockets specially during war times.

But this is another kind of rocket.

For a weapon, you would have needed authorizations

from the Ministries of Defense of Finance and of Interior.

But as you're presenting it

we just need to inform everyone in advance.

They need our help.

They'll write a letter to us

that we'll transmit to the Ministries of Defense and Foreign Affairs

to the municipalities and the police.

And we'll synchronize everything.

With Miss Jana.

Now, what's going to happen?

We will film in Dbayeh.

Then, we'll put the rocket on a truck and we'll move it through the streets

to Haigazian.

We'll have to see how the army can cooperate.

0k, now the army services are informed.

But you'll have to decide

how you want to transport it.

This is the point.

Are they aware that the rocket will be uncovered?

No. We were not clear about it.

Minister's office

You're afraid of it being bombed? No...

We're not really afraid. We want to do it in an artistic way.

But at the factory...

some of the people we were talking to frightened us.

We need your advice, Mr. Minister.

Everything that is made public

becomes immediately less dangerous.

I don't think there will be a problem.

We must communicate.

Yes, and you must give some details:

"We'll have a big truck...

We'll transport a rocket-shaped sculpture from Dbayeh..."

We will appear on TV write in newspapers, to explain it.

To avoid any possible ambiguity.

Any misunderstanding.

Any misunderstanding.

We now welcome the filmmakers Khalil Joreige and Joana Hadjithomas

who are currently working on a documentary film:

"The Lebanese Rocket Society".

I'm talking about an 8-m eter-rocket, it's not small.

We took some pictures of it and decided to reproduce it.

General Security agreement for the script.

Official copy of General Security publications.

Text authorizing the transfer of the rocket to Haigazian University.

Authorization from the Beirut municipality for a documentary film.

Also from the Mount Lebanon municipality to shoot a documentary.

Authorization from the town of Bourj Hammoud to shoot a documentary film.

Authorization from the Ministry of Defense.

Agreement about authorizations from the Internal Security Forces.

It was a space project meant for research.

They were all contributing to a project

that was closely linked to the modernity of the times.

Everyone will be surprised many people won't rem ember.

Some won't know whether it's about rockets or weapons

and will think that you're talking about the war.

We consider that art and film

are places where things can still happen today.

If someone com es and says: "We're going to reproduce a rocket

and take it on a truck from Dbayeh to Kantari"

people will laugh and say it's impossible.

It's only in places like art and cinema

that such a project can take place.

Our territory, the place where we're trying to live, can expand.

So, there is a message here...

in a certain way.

Our project is to offer a replica to scale of the Cedar 4 rocket

8 meter long and weighing nearly a ton

to the university where it all began.

A sculpture that pays tribute to the Rocket Society and its dreamers.

Paul Haidostian the university President

accepts and understands that there only on the university grounds

can this rocket be interpreted accurately:

as an artistic and scientific project.

All our condolences The government falls again!

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

the government falls.

The Joumblatt bloc can topple the government

Ben Ali makes concessions

Last chance to save Lebanon

Day after day, tension persists.

Anew cabinet does not seem to see the light.

Hariri: me or chaos

The revolt of the Egyptian people "legitimized" by the army

Dignity

Arab and Iranian regimes threatened

Egypt - Bahrain - Lybia Tunisia - Iraq - Yemen

The region is boiling Lebanon is snoring

Meanwhile throughout the region and beyond,

things are changing profoundly.

Like an awakening after a long sleep

a sleep without dreams

in societies that hailed dictators

who narrowed horizons and our yearning for space.

An extraordinary wind of freedom

is blowing in most of the region.

Strength, courage, dignity are invading streets.

Men and women revolt and don't fall silent

they cannot be silenced.

Despite the uncertain future the fear of what could come next

longing for freedom and the ability of dreaming came back.

And this dream cannot be stopped.

On February 21 st the day before D-Day

everything is ready.

We check the rocket's trajectory for one last time

under dreadful, torrential rain.

We check the weather forecast

Sunny tomorrow with a possibility of rain...

Outwitting reality, provoking it defying it, transforming it.

As a tribute to our dreamers create a rocket.

But this is not a weapon.

This is the fruit of what a group of scientists were some years ago

and of what we too could be today:

researchers, utopians, dreamers.

What if it had never stopped?

What if the Lebanese space project had continued?

Welcome to the Museum of the Lebanese Rocket Society.

You are going to discover the story of the Lebanese space research

which began in 1960.

In 1969, the first Lebanese satellite was launched into space.

Since then

satellites have played a fundamental role in our country

on the economic military and scientific levels.

Military satellites helped us

avoiding regional conflicts and securing our borders

turning Lebanon nowadays into the most secure countries of the area.

Scientific satellites discovered gas fields in the territorial waters

by the end of the 60's

and helped turn this country

into the modern and developed nation it has become.

On this glorious day

modern Nations have decided

to send probes into space

to pursue the mission of the probe Voyager 1

launched years ago on a reconnaissance mission.

Voyager 1 traveling at more than 17 km/s

in relation to the sun

carries a message which symbolizes Humanity.

It will be the first probe

to approach a star.

Soon, the probe will stop working

because of a shortage of energy.

The mission of Voyager 1 is coming to an end

at a time when new probes are being launched worldwide

Throughout their journey

these probes will gather information through space

and send messages in the form of images, sounds

and words from our planet.

All this information

is engraved on Golden Records

destined to reach life in outer space.

Lebanon is sending out the probe Adonis

bearing the colors of the Lebanese flag

which will travel through space

with other probes from all over the world

for an encounter with the absolute.

The Lebanese Golden Record

has collected images and sounds from Lebanon

to carry them far and very high

as a message of peace and liberty.

I will borrow the words

that President Jimmy Carter used for the launching of Voyager 1

to also send our message to the dwellers of other skies saying:

"This is a present from a small, distant world"

"a token of our sounds"

"our science, our images"

"Our history our thoughts and our feelings."

"We are attempting to survive our time"

"so we may live into yours."