UAE Announces Mission to Explore Asteroid Belt with Newly Announced Spacecraft

Jakarta –

United Arab Emirates (UAE) announced their latest mission plan send spaceship. No longer to the Moon or Mars like other countries that are also exploring space, the UAE wants to explore the belt asteroid main Solar System.

Earlier in 2020, the oil-rich country’s space exploration mission successfully launched the Hope spacecraft to Mars in 2020. Dubbed Emirates Mission to the Asteroid Belt or Emirates Mission to the Asteroid Belt, this project aims to develop a spacecraft in the coming years, then launch it in 2028 to study asteroids.

“This mission is a follow-up to the Mars mission which is the first mission to Mars from the region,” said Mohsen al-Awadhi, program director of the Emirates Mission to the Asteroid Belt, quoted by Al Arabiya News.

“We created the same thing with this mission. That is, the first mission to explore these seven asteroids specifically and the first of its kind when viewed from a grand tour aspect,” he continued.

The UAE becomes the first Arab country and the second country to successfully enter Mars orbit on its first attempt when the Hope probe reaches the Red Planet in February 2021. The craft’s goals include providing the first complete picture of Mars’ atmosphere and its layers, and helping to answer important questions about climate and composition. Mars.

If successful, the newly announced spacecraft will fly at speeds of up to 33,000 kilometers per hour on a seven-year journey to explore six asteroids. This mission will culminate in the deployment of a lander to a rare seventh ‘red’ asteroid, which scientists say could provide insights about Earth.

Organic compounds such as water are essential constituents of life and have been found in some asteroids, potentially delivered via collision with other organic-rich bodies or through the creation of complex organic molecules in outer space. Investigating the origin of these compounds, along with the possible presence of water in red asteroids, could shed light on the origin of Earth’s water, thereby offering valuable insight into the origin of life on our planet.

The effort is an important milestone for the burgeoning UAE space agency, which was only founded in 2014 following its successful send of the Hope mission probe to Mars. The new mission’s journey will cover a distance more than ten times greater than the Mars mission.

The cruiser aircraft was named MBR, after the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who also served as the hereditary vice president and prime minister of the UAE. The probe will head first to Venus whose planet’s gravitational pull will throw it back past Earth and then Mars.

The craft will eventually reach the asteroid belt, fly as close as 150 kilometers to the space rocks and cover a total distance of 5 billion kilometers. Then in October 2034, the craft is expected to make its final maneuvers to the seventh and final asteroid, named Justitia, before deploying its lander more than a year later.

Justitia, believed to be one of only two known red asteroids, is thought to have a surface laden with organic matter and originate in a region where giant planets formed, or even further afield.

“It’s one of the two reddest objects in the asteroid belt, and scientists don’t really understand why it’s so red,” said Hoor Al-Maazmi, space science researcher at the UAE space agency.

“There are theories about it coming from the Kuiper Belt and there’s more red stuff there. So that’s one thing we can learn from because it’s potentially rich in water as well.”

This mission will deploy a landing craft to study the surface of Justitia which is wholly developed by a private UAE start-up. This move may lay the groundwork for possible future extraction of asteroid resources to support human missions in space and perhaps even the UAE’s ambitious goal of establishing a colony on Mars by 2117.

“We’ve identified the key areas we want private sector startups to be a part of, and we’ll be engaging with them through that. We understand that the knowledge we have in UAE is still building. We’ll give these startups the knowledge they need , ” said Al Awadhi.

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(rns/agt)