All You Need To Know About The UAE’s Mission To The Asteroid Belt
The UAE has been making big strides in space exploration not only have they had their very first Emirati astronaut perform a spacewalk but they also launched a probe that journeyed all the way to Mars. Today, they continue with their latest project set to be launched in 2028. A spacecraft is set to undergo a six-year journey to an asteroid belt located between Mars and Jupiter.
This special probe will travel past six space rocks and land on the seventh. Its main task is to study all seven asteroids. Studying the asteroid belt will help scientists learn more about how the Earth and other planets were formed as these kinds of rocks contain remnants of the solar system.
The UAE Space Agency have already set out an entire plan for the probe’s journey and will use the gravity of several planets including Venus, Earth and Mars to complete its journey. So far, if the journey goes as planned the probe is set to fly past its first asteroid in early 2030.
This is considered the space agency’s most challenging project thus far especially because it will be seven times the distance that the Hope probe travelled to arrive at Mars back in February 2021. The probe will have to travel 3.6 billion kilometers to reach the asteroids.
This will mark yet another big space-related feat for the UAE and will continue to bring them closer to becoming a dominate player in the space sector.
