It is an elite club of just three nations: the US, Russia and China — the only countries to successfully land a spacecraft on the moon. Now, the United Arab Emirates is trying to join them, announcing an unmanned moon mission planned for 2024.
The UAE’s mission is designed as a stepping stone towards the exploration of Mars, which the Gulf nation is targeting with its Mars 2117 project. Earlier this year, the project took off with the launch of a probe — named Al Amal, or “Hope” — due to reach the red planet’s orbit in February 2021.The new lunar mission involves a small rover, to be built entirely at Dubai’s Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center. Inaugurated in 2006, the center has already designed and built Earth-orbit satellites under an all-Emirati team, but the rover is its most ambitious technological undertaking to date.Architects have designed a Martian city for the desert outside Dubai”We have experience with orbiters, but this will be the first mission in which we are landing on another celestial body,” says Adnan Al Rais, who leads the Mars 2117 program at the MBRSC.
We are working on the development of the science and technologies that will enable us one day to send humans to Mars,” explains Al Rais. “In order to do that, we looked into the gaps that we currently have in our knowledge; space robotics and robotic technologies are among those gaps, which we are addressing by developing a lunar rover.”
The Hope Probe scientists say the spacecraft has a mass of 1,350 kg — about the size of an SUV.
Moon rush
The rover — named Rashid in honor of the late Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum, former ruler of Dubai and father of the current sheik — is currently in the design phase. It will be built in 2022 and tested the following year, ahead of the 2024 mission launch.
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