Exploring the Asteroid Belt: UAE’s Major National Scientific Project.

Hitekno.com – The United Arab Emirates (UAE) will develop a space probe that will travel 5 billion kilometers to explore the segment of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, the UAE Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, announced on Monday.

“The UAE’s mission to explore the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter will span 13 years, six years for spacecraft development and seven years for travel, during which the MBR Explorer spacecraft will travel 5 billion kilometers, past Mars, to explore seven asteroids and land on the last asteroid in 2034,” he wrote on Twitter, quoted from Sputnik News.

The Prime Minister added that the spacecraft named after him would travel 10 times farther than the Hope robotic probe launched by the country in 2020.

The mission to explore the asteroid belt is a major national scientific project as well as a “unique global initiative in space science and research,” which involves the establishment of a private space technology company in the country, the establishment of a large-scale space mission control center, and the education of new UAE staff, he added.

In March, Amer AlGhaferi, senior director of the Department of Space Engineering at the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center (MBRSC), told Sputnik that the UAE is working with the US and Russian space agencies on scientific experiments that it hopes will help ensure that humans one day can inhabit Mars.