Dubai, Gatra.com – The government of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will launch a new space mission to explore the planet Venus and the asteroid belt of other solar systems.
The explanation was revealed by the UAE government in a tweet Tuesday, quoted by Al-arabiya, Tuesday (5/10).
“Including the landing of a plane on one of the asteroids, marking the first time an Arab space mission has landed on an asteroid,” Dubai ruler Mohammed bin Rashid said in a tweet.
The Crown Prince of the capital Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Zayed in a tweet called the new launch an ambitious project within the UAE’s growing space programme.
“The UAE is determined to make a meaningful contribution to space exploration, scientific research and our understanding of the solar system,” he said.
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Previously the planet Mars had been a target in the UAE’s space program with its Hope probe, which entered the red planet’s orbit in February 2021.
Hope collects data about the Martian atmosphere, using various light and infrared cameras.
“The asteroid mission will involve traveling 3.6 billion kilometers, seven times farther from Earth than the Emirates Mars Mission,” Mohammed bin Rashid said in a tweet.
Whereas Venus is less than half the distance Mars is from Earth, at 128 million kilometers compared to Mars at 395 million kilometers.
Venus is the closest planet to Earth, and was the first to be explored by NASA’s Mariner 2 spacecraft, which flew in 1962.
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Several Soviet planes also landed on the planet’s surface, but they did not last long because of the strong air pressure (equivalent to one mile underwater on Earth) and the temperature, which was around 475 degrees Celsius on the surface.
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