UAE REACHES FOR STARS AGAIN IN MISSION TO STUDY ASTEROID BELT
▶ Space agency took first steps on five-billion-kilometre journey before launch of Hope probe
As the launch of the UAE’s mission to Mars made global headlines, another, more complex, Emirati space project was brewing in the background – code-named Max.
It was part of the UAE Space Agency’s plans to reach beyond the Red Planet and test the limits of its engineers and the country’s private space sector.
The agency came up with a concept plan to explore the main asteroid belt in the solar system in 2019.
The mission would involve sending a spacecraft about five billion kilometres to a region between Mars and Jupiter.
That is seven times the distance the Hope probe travelled to reach the Red Planet.
“The initial idea of what we should do after the Emirates Mars Mission actually started one or two years prior to the launch of the Hope probe,” Sarah Al Amiri, Minister of State for Public Education and Advanced Technology, and chairwoman of the UAE Space Agency, told The National.
“We were looking at how to take capabilities that were developed across the Emirates Mars Mission and plug that into another mission.”
The challenge would then be to make that mission an overarching programme that takes the country’s space ambitions to a new level, she said.
The agency considered planning a second mission to the Moon – after the project to send the Rashid rover to the lunar surface.
Ms Al Amiri said sending a spacecraft to the asteroid belt would “up the game” and allow the agency to design a more advanced spacecraft.
It took about four years for officials and engineers to work out the project, which was known as multiple asteroid exploration, or Max.
A few details of the mission were made public in 2021, but it still did not have a name.
At that time the agency had not yet decided on the scientific aims of the mission or the design of the spacecraft.
Those details of the Emirates Mission to the Asteroid Belt were announced yesterday.
The project will send a spacecraft known as the MBR Explorer – named after Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President and Ruler of Dubai – to the asteroid belt in 2028.
It will take the spacecraft about seven years to reach its destination.
The MBR Explorer will perform fly-bys at six asteroids before landing on a seventh.
The craft will use the gravitational pull of Venus, Earth and Mars to help it reach the belt.
“After the success of arrival to Mars, we started having discussions with the government in regards to what’s next,” Ms Al Amiri said. “We were grateful to have been given a go-ahead and funding for this programme moving forward.”
The agency hopes more than 50 per cent of the spacecraft will be developed by private companies in the UAE.
The private sector will work with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder, which helped to build the Hope probe.
A Dh3 billion ($816.8 million) national space fund, a project called Sirb, has also been established to help expand the UAE’s private space sector.
“With what we’re currently doing, with regards to our programmes, you’ll see where we’re using exploration missions to be able to expedite and develop a higher capability cadence,” Ms Al Amiri said.
“But we’re using programmes, such as Sirb, to unlock capabilities within the UAE sector and develop commercial value.”
A Dh3 billion national space fund, a project called Sirb, has been established to expand the private space sector