UAE asteroid mission

[insert_name]

The UAE space program has announced a mission to visit seven asteroids, culminating in a landing on the last one. The target asteroids and spacecraft instruments have yet to be announced.

https://www.space.com/united-arab-emirates-asteroid-mission-2028

 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Cool stuff.  Getting more players in the arena is a good thing! 

[StrandedonEarth]

1 minute ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Cool stuff.  Getting more players in the arena is a good thing! 

Absolutely. The first step towards utilizing their resources 

[Scotius]

Ambitious goal. Wonder what kind of ion engine this probe will use, and how much deltaV it will have?

Seven asteroids... whew!

[kerbiloid]

And drill.

There should be frozen hydrocarbon asteroids somewhere in the system.

[Jack White]

Interesting to see that happening for the fifth time. There were only four missions on asteroids and they were done by different USA and Japan at different times. The first one was NEAR Shoemaker by the USA in 2001, the second and the third were sent by the USA and Japan in the same year of 2005 and the last one was sent in 2018 by Japan. And now UAE will send SEVEN missions to the asteroids. It's a huge plan, but they have all the resources to do that.

Edited October 11, 2021 by Jack White

[tater]

Well, UAE plus the University of Colorado (the people actually building the spacecraft).

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

2 hours ago, tater said:

Well, UAE plus the University of Colorado (the people actually building the spacecraft).

Money has to come from somewhere.  As does the education.

An argument can be made that having 'people who look like me' doing space will inspire people in parts of the world where 'doing space' was seen as something done only by other people.

[StrandedonEarth]

Yes, I'm gathering that one of the UAE goals is to get training and experience for their young people. I would assume there are young Emiratis at UoC deeply involved with the projects.