UAE will send spacecraft to explore asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter

The United Arab Emirates will send the MBR Explorer device into space, which will study the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, Prime Minister and Vice President of the UAE, the Ruler of the Emirate of Dubai, Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum wrote on Twitter.

"At the President's residence, we presented details of one of our most important space [research] projects, the UAE Science Mission to Explore the Asteroid Belt, which will last 13 years: six years for [the device] development and seven years for the research flight," he tweeted.

According to the Prime Minister, after whom the MBR Explorer is named, it will travel 5 billion km to explore seven asteroids and land on the last asteroid in 2034. He noted that the MBR Explorer will fly 10 times more space than the Al-Amal probe, which entered Mars orbit on February 9, 2022.

The Prime Minister of the UAE also noted that the mission to explore the asteroid belt is a large-scale national scientific and unique global research project. Within its framework, Emirati private companies [specializing] in space technologies will be created, a ground control center for missions to distant space will be established, and personnel training will be carried out.

As reported by the Emirati newspaper The National, the mission was announced back in 2021, but details about the device's design and scientific goals are only now being unveiled. Accordingly, the weight of the MBR Explorer will be 2.3 tons, it will work autonomously, and will be equipped with large foldable solar panels. During the mission, it will fly past six asteroids and then land a part of the device on the seventh asteroid.

In addition to its scientific goals, the mission could also lay the groundwork for future resource mining in space, as this asteroid belt contains $700 quintillion worth of minerals such as iron, gold and nickel.

In July 2020, the UAE sent the Al-Amal interplanetary station to Mars. The purpose of this mission is to study the Martian atmosphere and climate, as well as the changing seasons of the Martian year, which lasts almost twice as long as on Earth.

In 2020, the UAE announced the launch of the National Lunar Exploration Program. On December 11, 2022, the Japanese Hakuto-R spacecraft was launched into space from the USA, which was supposed to land the Emirati Rashid rover created by the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Center on the Moon. However, on April 25, the head of the company that developed the Ispace module, Takeshi Hakamada, announced that during the landing on the Мoon, contact with Hakuto-R was lost, the mission was declared a failure.