The UAE spacecraft will fly past six asteroids and land the lander on a seventh asteroid that is 53 km wide.
The main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Photo: News9
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is targeting seven different rocky bodies in its ambitious mission to the asteroid belt. In an announcement at the upcoming Asteroids, Comets and Meteorites Conference in Arizona in June, the UAE space agency revealed the specific goals of the mission. The mission will launch in 2028 and visit seven main-belt asteroids, including six high-speed flybys en route to asteroid 269 Justitia. Other asteroids on the list include 10253 Westerwald, 623 Chimaera, 13294 Rockox, 88055, 23871 and 59980.
Once it reaches 269 Justitia, the spacecraft will deploy its lander to land on the surface. Previously, only NASA’s OSIRIS-REx and Near-Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) Shoemaker spacecraft, along with Japan’s Hayabusa1 and Hayabusa2 probes, successfully landed on the asteroid’s surface. The 53-kilometer-wide asteroid 269 Justitia has a reddish hue, possibly due to the presence of an organic compound called tholin, which is abundant on Pluto and many other icy bodies in the outer solar system.
The spacecraft will arrive at 269 Justitia in April 2034. If the asteroid formed in the outer solar system, the UAE mission will provide unique insights into the bodies beyond Neptune. The mission’s scientific goal is to understand the origin and evolution of water-rich asteroids and assess their resource potential. The spacecraft will use solar electric propulsion for its six-year journey, taking advantage of gravity from flybys of Venus, Earth, and Mars along the way. The UAE will collaborate with the University of Colorado, Boulder, as it did on the previous Mars Hope mission. Hope is still orbiting Mars and recently surveyed Deimos, the smaller of the planet’s two moons.
An Khang (According to Space )
Source link
Comment (0)