DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – The United Arab Emirates plans to send an unmanned spacecraft to the moon in 2024, a senior Emirati official said Tuesday, the latest gamble on the oil-rich country that could make it the fourth largest country in the world. Earth to achieve that goal.
The announcement through Dubai leader Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who is also vice president and prime minister of the hereditary United Arab Emirates, shows the immediate expansion of the area program that bears his name. area to Mars, while last year he sent his first astronaut to the International Space Station.
“It will be an Emirati-made lunar rover that will land on the surface of the moon in 2024 in spaces that have not been explored in the past through human missions,” Sheikh Mohammed wrote on Twitter.
He did not specify where they planned to explore the United Arab Emirates, or how he would launch the rover into space. The launch of its Amal spacecraft, or “Hope” on Mars, took place at the Japanese Space Center in Tanegashima in July. , who introduced the probe, said there was nothing about the lunar vehicle launch and refused to comment when he was contacted through The Associated Press.
The Emirati rover will analyze the lunar surface, mobility on the moon’s surface and how other surfaces interact with lunar particles, the government later said. The 10 kilogram (22 lb) rover will bring two high-resolution cameras, a microscopic camera, a thermal imaging camera, a probe and other devices, he said.
Sheikh Mohammed said the rover would be called “Rashid”, the same name as his father, Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum, one of the first founding leaders of the United Arab Emirates, a federation of seven sheikhs from Arabia. Peninsula.
Sheikh Mohammed made the announcement on Twitter after a closed-door meeting with officials. Photographs from the state media assembly showed him and others dressed in masks due to the coronavirus pandemic.
If successful in 2024, the United Arab Emirates could be the fourth country on Earth to land a spacecraft on the Moon, after the United States, the Soviet Union, and China. India tried and couldn’t land a spaceship last year. Israel also saw its own. A small spacecraft crashed to the lunar surface last year before landing, failing in an ambitious attempt to make history as the first privately funded lunar landing.
In July, the UAE Amal probe, introduced from Japan, remains on its way to Mars and is expected to succeed on the Red Planet in February 2021, the year the UAE celebrates the 50th anniversary of the formation. from the country. Amal will begin transmitting Martian atmospheric data, which will be available to the foreign clinical community, authorities said.
A successful project for the Moon would be a major milestone for the long-term oil-dependent economy in space. The UAE has also set itself the ambitious purpose of building a human colony on Mars until 2117.
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Associated Press editors Isabel DeBre in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed to the report.
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