AMINA AL KETBI (DUBAI)

The Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) is preparing to announce the main features of the Rashid Explorer 2 mission as part of a new attempt to reach the moon. This comes after the announcement by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, to start the new mission.

The Rashid Explorer 1 was fully developed by a team of Emirati engineers, experts, and researchers at the MBRSC. The team of the Rashid 1 mission gained new knowledge through the development of the first Emirati and Arab explorer, successfully achieving the goal of designing, developing the explorer, and launching it into the moon’s orbit, which is a very important achievement, despite the explorer Rashid and other payloads on board the spacecraft not achieving their missions as planned.

The Emirates Lunar Exploration Project is driven by scientific objectives, which include developing robotic technologies for exploration vehicle systems, studying new sites on the moon’s surface for the first time, studying and analysing dust, and conducting tests to study various aspects, including lunar soil, thermal properties of surface structures, the lunar photoelectric envelope, plasma measurements, photo-electronics, and dust particles above the illuminated part of the moon’s surface.

The Emirates Lunar Exploration Project falls under the new strategy launched by the MBRSC for 2021-2031. The project includes developing and launching the first Emirati lunar explorer, positioning the UAE as the fourth country in the world to participate in lunar exploration missions for scientific purposes after the United States, the former Soviet Union, and China, and becoming the first Arab country to undertake a space mission to explore the moon’s surface through an explorer designed and developed by a team of 50 Emirati engineers, experts, and researchers at the MBRSC, 40% of whom are women.

The engineers of the Emirates Lunar Exploration Project work within a specialised team in building the structural engineering of the explorer, and others responsible for communications, engineering and risk management, thermal systems and imaging, among other new and important specialisations in this regard.

The team were trained on their roles and the operation of devices, familiarising themselves with the data results, as well as studying, preparing operations and scenarios, gaining experience through the first mission, and working on preparing for the second mission that was announced.

The preparations also included simulating the deployment of the communication antenna that activates the power and capacity of communication, which is deployed shortly after landing on the moon’s surface, to ensure the operation of the communication network, up to the preparations for the explorer’s landing on the moon’s surface and its movement, which equips the team for any communication delay that may occur due to the time difference between the Earth and the moon. Additionally, simulations of capturing images in these operations were conducted for engineers to test the developed camera sequence and verify the processed images.

The Rashid Explorer 1 mission included scientific targets aimed at answering the question: Why is the UAE keen on exploring the moon? This includes testing new technologies on its surface, which is harsher than Mars’ environment and closer to Earth, contributing to building sustainable human presence on it, and paving the way for launching manned exploration missions to Mars, ultimately answering scientific questions related to the formation of both the solar system and Earth.