The UAE Space Agency announced plans for a new Emirati interplanetary mission, designed to further accelerate the nation’s space engineering, scientific research, and exploration capabilities.
“We have set our eyes to the stars because our journey to development and progress has no boundaries, no borders, and no limitations. We are investing in the generations to come,” said Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai.
“With each new advancement we make in space, we create opportunities for young people here on earth.”
Built on the knowledge and experience gained from the Emirates Mars Mission, the new mission will involve significant participation from Emirati private sector companies, a statement said.
It is scheduled for launch in 2028, with the primary goal of exploring the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, the source of most meteorites that impact the earth.
Mohamed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, said: “This new mission tests and extends the capabilities of Emirati youth in achieving Zayed’s ambition to explore space. We are certain that our talented local engineers, academic and research institutions, which have so far made quantum leaps in developing our space sector, are well equipped to take on this daring new challenge.”
The spacecraft will undertake a 3.6 billion km, five-year journey, which will see it perform gravity assist manoeuvres by orbiting first Venus, then Earth in order to build the velocity required in order to reach the main asteroid belt, located beyond Mars.
Its trajectory around Venus will see it reaching solar proximity of 109 million km, requiring substantial thermal protection and the furthest distance from the sun of 448 million km, requiring high levels of insulation and spacecraft operation with minimal levels of available solar energy.
Through its journey, it will study seven main-belt asteroids.
Sarah Al Amiri chair of the UAE Space Agency, said: “Our goal is clear: to accelerate the development of innovation and knowledge-based enterprises in the Emirates. This can’t be done by going steady-state, this requires leaps in imagination, in faith, and the pursuit of goals that go beyond prudent or methodical.”
The mission will make its first close planetary approach orbiting Venus in mid-2028, followed by a close orbit of Earth in mid-2029. It will make its first fly-by of a main asteroid belt object in 2030, going on to observe a total of seven main-belt asteroids before its final landing on an asteroid 560 million kilometers from Earth in 2033.
This will make the UAE the fourth nation to land a spacecraft on an asteroid.
The precise science goals and instrumentation to be deployed on the mission are to be announced in mid-2022.
Initiatives are being launched around the new mission by the UAE Space Agency to accelerate the development of the UAE’s space sector including a fully-funded program to establish Emirati space sector businesses, priority access to contracts and procurement for the mission by Emirati companies, a vocational training program to train young Emiratis on component assembly and space subsystems engineering and a program to bring local and international universities and research centers together to work on the mission, including LASP and Emirates University.
The Emirates’ journey to space started in 1997, with the launch of the country’s first communications satellite, Thuraya.
In 2014, the Emirates Mars Mission was announced, conceived to disrupt and accelerate the UAE’s space sector. The Hope Probe aims to build the first full picture of Mars’s climate throughout the Martian year and reached Mars orbit in 2021, the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the UAE, which became an independent nation on December 2, 1971.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Technology Express staff and is published from a syndicated feed)
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