The United Arab Emirates plans to send a rover to the Moon in 2024, announced a senior official on Tuesday. If successful, the UAE would become the fourth country to achieve a soft landing on the lunar surface.
The UAE has established itself as a leader in space exploration. From sending astronaut Hazzaa Ali Almansoori to the International Space Station aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket in September 2019, to the successful launch of the Hope Mars Mission—focused on studying the Martian atmosphere—the nation has made remarkable strides. The orbiter, launched last July, is set to arrive at the Red Planet next February.
Building on this momentum, the UAE aims to deploy its first lunar rover starting in 2024. The announcement came from Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE. While the exact landing site remains undisclosed, it will target an area never before explored by human missions.
The UAE previously partnered with Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries for the Hope mission launch via an H-IIA rocket from Tanegashima. Details on the lunar rover's launch provider are not yet available.
Named "Rashid" after Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum, a founding ruler of the UAE and father of Sheikh Mohammed, the 10-kg rover will analyze the lunar surface. It features two high-resolution cameras and a thermal imaging camera.
A successful 2024 mission would place the UAE alongside the United States, Soviet Union, and China as the fourth nation to soft-land on the Moon.
India's Chandrayaan-1 crashed in 2008, later located by NASA in 2016. Chandrayaan-2's lander lost contact in September 2019, crashing before touchdown, with debris spotted by NASA that November.
Israel's private Beresheet mission failed in April 2019 when its engine shut down during descent, crashing in the Sea of Serenity.
