“UAE’s Mission to the Asteroid Belt: Exploring Red Asteroids for Clues to Origins of Life on Earth”

Designated Emirates Mission to the Asteroid Belt, the project intends to develop a rover in the coming years and launch it in 2028 to study various asteroids.

“This mission is a follow-up to the mission to Mars, where it was the first in the region,” said Mohsen Al Awadhi, director of the Emirates Mission to the Asteroid Belt program.

“We are creating the same thing with this mission. It is the first mission ever to explore these seven asteroids,” he added.

The UAE became the first Arab state and the second ever to successfully orbit Mars when its probe ‘Hope’ reached the designated red planet in February 2021.

The goals include the obtaining the first complete description of the atmosphere of Mars e helps to get answers to key questions about the climate and the composition of the planet.

If successful, the project will culminate in landing on an asteroid, red, which scientists believe may provide clues about the beginning of life on Earth.

Organic components such as water, which are crucial constituents of life, have been found in some asteroids, potentially due to collisions with other organically rich bodies or the creation of complex organic molecules in space.

Investigating the origins of these components, along with the possible presence of water in red asteroids, could contribute to clarify the origin of water on Earth and thus the genesis of life on the planet.

This project is a significant milestone for the UAE space agency, created in 2014. The distance to be covered now by the space vehicle is ten times greater than that covered by the mission to Mars.

To reach the asteroid belt, the vehicle must cover a total distance of five billion kilometers.

What happens?

in october 2034, the rover should head towards the seventh and final asteroid, called Justitia, where it must contact its surface a year later. Justitia, believed to be one of only two known red asteroids, is believed to have a surface laden with organic compounds.

“It’s one of the two red objects in the asteroid belt and scientists don’t understand why it’s red,” said Hoor AlMaazmi, a space researcher at the UAE agency.

The vehicle will place a device on the surface of the asteroid to study its surface. It could lay the groundwork for resource extraction from asteroids that will support long-term human space missions – and perhaps even the UAE’s ambitious goal of construction of a colony in Marte em 2117.