The United Arab Emirates Space Center (MBRSC) announced today that the agency has signed a memorandum of understanding with the China National Space Administration (CNSA) to cooperate in future lunar work to help it fulfill its ambition to further explore the moon. The MBRSC official tweeted that the two sides will "cooperate on future lunar missions, including the landing of MBRSC's rover on a CNSA lander", and the agreement marks "the first joint space project between the UAE and China".
Based on what is currently known, MBRSC is already working with two major corporate partners on its lunar mission, which is scheduled to send the small Rashid rover into space by the end of this year. The mission will be launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, and the 22-pound (10-kilogram) Rashid will land on the Hakuto-R lander made by Tokyo-based company ispace. The UAE's lunar mission aims to learn more about lunar dust, lunar soil, and airless objects (space objects that lack an atmosphere). One of the experiments will determine the materials used in space suits, or the landing system used to send humans to the moon, according to Adnan Arrais, who heads MBRSC's Mars 2117 project.
The 10-kilogram "Rashid" rover will take ispace's lander to the moon. The lander weighs 240 kilograms, and is 2.3 meters high and 2.6 meters wide. It will be launched by the US SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Once ispace's lander enters Earth's orbit, it will travel to the moon on its own, land, and unload the rover. The lander will be powered by solar panels, allowing the rover to communicate with Earth. The rover will carry six instruments weighing less than 10 kilograms in total. It will use two high-resolution cameras, a microscopy camera, and a thermal imaging camera to collect data and images and send them back to Earth.
The UAE believes that China's lunar exploration record is impressive, so it is also very meaningful to cooperate with China in future lunar exploration. IT House has learned that in the past ten years, my country has launched three lunar exploration missions, all of which have been successful. Chang'e-3 landed on the moon in December 2013 and Chang'e-4 in January 2019, and both missions are still ongoing. In addition to this, we have brought lunar soil and lunar rocks back to Earth through the Chang'e 5 mission at the end of 2020, completing the first lunar sample return since the mid-1970s.
The UAE also has extensive experience in space exploration, such as the country sending its first astronaut Hazza Al Mansouri to the International Space Station in the autumn of 2019. Another Emirati astronaut, Sultan AlNeyadi, will also travel to the International Space Station next year and stay in space for six months on SpaceX's Crew-6 mission for NASA. In 2020, the UAE launched a Mars exploration mission, sending a probe called Hope to the red planet. The probe arrived safely on Mars in February 2021 and has been studying the Martian atmosphere and climate. The country is currently working on an asteroid belt mission, with the goal of launching in the late 20s.