The United Arab Emirates announced on Tuesday it plans to send a probe to land on an asteroid between Mars and Jupiter to collect data on the origin of the universe, the latest project in the oil-rich consortium’s ambitious space program.
A successful landing will see the UAE join the elite clubs of the European Union, Japan and the United States, who completed the feat.
The probe will remain behind the asteroid, sending back information about the asteroid’s composition as long as its battery remains charged.
The project targets a launch in 2028 with a landing in 2033, a five-year journey during which the spacecraft will cover a distance of about 3.6 billion kilometers (2.2 billion miles).
The spacecraft would need to catapult first around Venus and then Earth to muster enough speed to reach the asteroid some 560 million kilometers (350 million miles) away.
Sarah Al Ameri, head of the UAE Space Agency, said discussions were still on what data the UAE would collect, but that the mission would be a bigger challenge than its predecessor, given that the spacecraft would be traveling near and far from the sun. . Minister of State for Advanced Technology.
Al-Amiri told the Associated Press that this comes against the backdrop of the UAE’s mission to Mars, which is some of the more difficult factors, not the more difficult.
If we went to complete this mission from scratch without getting the background we have today of the UAE Mars mission, that would be very difficult to achieve.”
According to NASA, about 1.1 million known asteroids orbit the solar system, which are remnants of its formation. Most of them orbit the Sun in the region between Mars and Jupiter targeted by the planned Emirati mission. Its composition includes the basic building blocks of the world as we know it today.
The UAE Space Agency said it would partner with the University of Colorado’s Laboratory of Atmospheric and Space Physics on the project. He immediately refused to provide a fee for the effort or describe the specific features of the asteroid he wanted to study. Al-Amiri said discussions were ongoing about the equipment the spacecraft would carry, which in turn would affect the features it could monitor.
The project comes after the UAE successfully put the Amal, or Hope, probe into orbit around Mars in February. The cost to build and launch the Charity car was $200 million. This does not include operating costs on Mars. Asteroid missions will likely cost more, given the challenges.
Emirates Airlines plans to send an unmanned spacecraft to the moon by 2024. The country, which includes Abu Dhabi and Dubai, has set an ambitious goal of establishing a human colony on Mars by 2117, but the immediate goal is to build both. The private space economy supported by the state with its projects.
That’s difficult. Al-Amiri said the asteroid project was a challenge. He added, “We fully understand and understand that, but we understand the benefits of implementing such large and challenging programs and projects.
(AFP)
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