The United Arab Emirates is preparing an ambitious new mission to visit several objects in an asteroid belt in the early 2030s. They plan to land softly on one of these rocks as early as 2033. To date, only two countries have achieved this feat.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has prided itself for several years on being technically progressive. In this sense, many advances have been made in the space field. In September 2019, the first Emirati cosmonaut, Hazzaa Ali Almansoori, flew aboard a Soyuz rocket, heading for the International Space Station. The UAE has also distinguished itself with its Mars Hope mission, still in orbit around the red planet, whose objective will be to focus on the study of the Martian atmosphere. Finally, the Emirati regime has also shared its intention to aim for the Moon, planning to send a first rover there as early as 2024.
The UAE is now proposing another mission:to send a probe to visit the asteroid belt, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Scheduled for 2028, this will be the country's second interplanetary effort.
The plan calls for flybys of Venus and Earth in mid-2028 and mid-2029, respectively . The goal will be to take advantage of their gravitational assistance to reach 2030 . On site, the probe will closely analyze seven different asteroids during its mission, before landing on an eighth rock in 2033 . To date, only four missions (Near-Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) Shoemaker and NASA's OSIRIS-REx, and Japan's Hayabusa1 and Hayabusa2 probes) have achieved such a feat.
With such a mission in the papers, the Emirates United Arab States are now more than ever in the big leagues. “Our goal is clear:to accelerate the development of innovation and knowledge-based businesses in the Emirates “said Sarah Al Amiri, President of the Emirates Space Agency. “It requires leaps of imagination, faith, and the pursuit of goals that go beyond prudence or method “.
As with the Mars Hope mission, the United Arab Emirates will partner with the Laboratory of Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Let's remember that all these projects are also intended to inspire the hundred million young people of the Arab world, "showing them a future beyond oil, which cannot not carry the country's economy forever “, said a few months ago Omran Sharaf, the Mars mission manager Hope. “Failure [on Mars] is an option “, he added. "But the failure of progress is not “.
