UAE’s Rashid Rover Launch Success, Watch SpaceX Falcon 9 Blast Off

The first, UAE successfully launched its spacecraft, Rashid Rover, created by the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Center (MBRSC). The spacecraft was carried into space by the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida on Sunday.

The Arab spacecraft is being delivered by the Japanese Lunar exploration lander HAKUTO-R created by space. The whole journey to the moon is expected to be completed by April 2023 and the spacecraft is taking a route that consumes less energy.

the Arab world’s first moon mission

The rover is expected to make efforts to land on the moon and survive the nighttime lunar environment which is considered to be very harsh when temperatures can go down to minus 183 degrees celsius where one lunar day is equivalent to 14.5 Earth days.  

The Arab lunar rover is named after the former ruler of Dubai, the late Sheikh Rashid Al Saeed. The Rashid lunar rover will try to analyze the plasma on the surface of the moon and will also initiate experiments to know more about moon dust.

It is a known fact that moon dust contains small sharp objects that are known to cause damage to the space suits of astronauts. The rover is entirely powered by solar energy and it has four cameras that include a microscopic camera and a thermal sensing camera.

It will be taking high-resolution pictures of the areas around it which will help in understanding its unforgiving nighttime environment and various other factors of the Moon’s geology.

Hamad Al Marzooqi, the project manager of Emirates Lunar Mission, MBRSC said that the rover has been designed and created by an entirely Emirati team. The construction of the rover began in 2017 and it weighs around ten kilograms.

The larger goal of MBRSC is to pull off a Mars mission and hopefully establish a human colony on Mars by 2117. The Rashid Rover is considered to be the first stepping stone for UAE in its future space missions that will also put UAE one of the major space powers in the world.

The launch was watched over by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice president and ruler of Dubai & Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed, crown prince of Dubai from the control room of MBRSC. The landing of the rover is supposed to be on the Atlas crater of the moon along the southeastern outer edge of the Mare Frigoris. 

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The historic event was recorded by most of the Arab media and even global media. The Hope probe was launched in July 2020 and reached the orbit of Mars in February 2021 it was also designed and developed by the members of the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Center. All eyes are on the UAE space mission after the successful launch of the Hope probe.

The UAE’s Hope probe which is part of the Emirates Mars Mission (EMM) and US NASA’s MAVEN mission have collaborated to share data with each other. Both of them will be trying to analyze the upper atmosphere of Mars to understand how the climate of Mars has evolved.

After a year of orbiting around Mars, the Emirates Mars Mission released photographs of Mars in March this year. The probe also had a chance to observe a storm that formed around the month of December last year and lasted through February this year. 

The MBRSC is leading the space tech innovation among the Middle-east nations and multiple space projects have been launched by the Emirates administration as part of its global reach-out program. They are also aiming to be part of the global scientific community and space research programs that push new frontiers in interplanetary travel and migration.