The United Arab Emirates is sending a mission to visit the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, via a stop-off at Venus.
This mission is intended to build on the success of the Emirates Mars Mission (EMM), which consists of an orbiter called Hope that entered orbit around Mars in February and is expected to continue observing our planetary neighbour until 2023.
鈥淲hen we embarked on the Emirates Mars Mission, we took on a six-year task that was in the order of five times more complex than the Earth observation satellites we were developing,鈥� said Sarah Al Amiri, chair of the UAE Space Agency, in a statement. 鈥淭his mission is in the order of five times more complex than EMM.鈥�
Advertisement
The asteroid belt is about 200 million kilometres further away than Mars, and that isn鈥檛 the only thing that makes this new mission tougher than the previous one. This probe will get both closer and further from the sun than the Hope orbiter did, so it needs protection from the heat and insulation from the cold. Over the course of its trip to the asteroid belt, it is due to travel about 3.6 billion kilometres 鈥� more than seven times further than Hope.
The spacecraft is scheduled to launch in 2028 heading towards Venus. It will fly by Venus and then back past Earth, using their gravity to boost its momentum enough to make it to the asteroid belt. After those close passes, it is expected to make its first close pass of an asteroid in 2030 and observe six more asteroids after that.
Finally, if all goes well, it will land on an asteroid 560 million kilometres away from Earth in 2033. This would make it the fourth mission to perform a controlled landing on an asteroid or comet: the European Space Agency鈥檚 Philae lander touched down on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency鈥檚 Hayabusa probe sat on asteroid Itokawa for about 30 minutes in 2005, and NASA鈥檚 NEAR Shoemaker craft landed on Eros in 2001. Notably, Philae was the only one of these that was originally designed as a lander.
Studying the asteroid belt is important because the asteroids are remnants from the early solar system. By learning more about them, we can understand what the solar system was like before the planets formed. They can also act as a proxy to study the rocks that smashed together to form Earth and the other planets.
Sign up to our free Launchpad newsletter for a voyage across the galaxy and beyond, every Friday
