The United Arab Emirates on Monday (29/5) announced plans to send a spacecraft to explore the main asteroid belt of the solar system. It is the oil-rich country’s latest space project after successfully launching the Hope spacecraft to Mars in 2020.
Dubbed the Emirates Mission to the Asteroid Belt, the project plans to develop a spacecraft over the next few years before launching it in 2028 to research various asteroids.
“This mission is a follow-up to the Mars mission, which is the first mission to Mars from this region,” said Mohsen Al Awadhi, program director for the Emirates Mission to the Asteroid Belt. “We did something similar with this mission. That is, being the first mission specifically to explore these seven asteroids and the first of its major touring aspects.”
The UAE became the first Arab country and the second country in the world to successfully enter Mars orbit on its first try, when the Hope probe successfully reaches the red planet in February 2021. One of the goals of the launch was to provide the first complete photographs of Mars’ atmosphere and its layers, and to help answer a number of important questions regarding the climate and composition of the planet.
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If successful, the newly announced spacecraft will hurtle at 33,000 kilometers per hour for a seven-year journey to explore six asteroids. The climax is the landing of a vehicle on the seventh asteroid, which is called a rare “red” asteroid, and which scientists say may contain information that could reveal the building blocks of life on Planet Earth.
Organic compounds such as water are essential ingredients for life that have been found in a number of asteroids, which may have been carried through collision events with other organic-rich bodies, or through the creation of organic molecules in outer space. Investigating the origins of these compounds, as well as the possible presence of water in red asteroids, could reveal the origins of water on Planet Earth, which could offer valuable knowledge about the origins of life on our planet.
The project is a major achievement for the UAE Space Agency which was founded in 2014 and continues to grow, following its success in sending Amal’s spacecraft, aka “Hope,” to Mars. The new space mission has a range 10 times farther than the mission to Mars.
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The cruiser was named MBR after the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who serves as vice president and prime minister of the UAE, the hereditary state. The craft will first head towards Venus, where the planet’s gravity will throw it back across Earth and then Mars.
The craft will eventually reach the asteroid belt, fly as close as 150 kilometers to those space rocks and cover a total distance of five billion kilometers.
In October 2034, the probe is expected to make its final push to the seventh and final asteroid, named Justitia, before landing a rover more than a year later. Justitia, which is believed to be one of only two existing red asteroids, is thought to have a surface laden with organic elements.
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“It is one of the two reddest bodies in the asteroid belt, and scientists don’t really understand why it is so red,” said Hood AlMaazmi, a space science researcher at the UAE space agency. “There are theories that say it comes from the Kuiper Belt which has more red stuff. That’s one thing we can research, because it’s possible that the asteroid is also rich in water.”
The MBR cruiser will land a cruiser, to be developed by private UAE start-ups, to research Justitia’s surface. The plan could lay the foundation for possible future extraction of asteroid resources to eventually support expanded human missions in space – and perhaps even for the UAE’s ambitious goal of establishing a colony on Mars by 2117. [rd/ah]
2023-05-30 08:43:56
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