Emirati engineers working at ‘full speed’ to reach Moon

Emirati engineers are working at “full speed” to develop the UAE’s second mission to the Moon, the chief of the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre has said.

Salem Al Marri, director general of the space centre, spoke to The National after reports were released detailing the crash landing of a private spacecraft carrying the UAE’s Rashid rover.

The ispace Hakuto-R Mission 1 lander, which carried the lunar rover, alongside other payloads, attempted a soft landing on the Moon’s surface on April 26, but ran out of fuel.

“Getting to the Moon, as we’ve said many times, is very difficult, very hard,” Mr Al Marri said.

“It seems small but obviously it’s a complex set of events that led to that false reading, and then eventually running out of fuel and crashing.

“The main thing is that ispace now knows exactly what happened and they can mitigate it in future missions.”

Ispace found that faulty software caused its lander to carry out incorrect altitude adjustments, ultimately causing it to run out of fuel before a soft touchdown was expected.

The space centre has already started work on a second rover, called Rashid 2.

As the UAE does not have its own landing capabilities, the space centre will have to secure a lander again, as it did with the Hakuto-R, to send its rover to the Moon.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President and Ruler of Dubai, visited the centre and told staff “to start working on the second rover”, Mr Al Marri said.

“We’re at full speed ahead. We’re now looking at different elements of where this rover would be landing. So, the team is working very hard,” he said.

“The team is quite upbeat looking at the results of how close we got with ispace.”

Mr Al Marri said engineers were working on the design of the rover and assessing possible landing sites.

“That really does make you feel like hopefully next time we can really make it and land on the surface of the Moon,” he said.