Venus and an asteroid landing

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – The United Arab Emirates on Tuesday announced plans to explore the planet Venus before the end of the next decade and land on an asteroid, outlining their new ambitions months after their first mission to Mars.

The spacecraft for the mission would take seven years to build, with a scheduled launch date of 2028. It would orbit Venus and then Earth, using gravitational assist maneuvers to reach an object in the asteroid belt in 2030. The The vehicle would then observe seven main belt asteroids, before landing on an asteroid 560 million kilometers (347 million miles) from Earth in 2033.

Venus missions have been taking place since the 1960s, with the Soviet Union, the United States, the European Space Agency, and Japan having already successfully orbited the second planet from the sun.

The mission, which will be developed with the Atmospheric and Space Physics Laboratory at the University of Colorado at Boulder, is expected to undertake a journey of 3.6 billion kilometers (2.2 billion miles), seven times longer than that of the United Arab Emirates’ Hope probe. which reached Mars in February 2021. This landing made the United Arab Emirates the second country to successfully enter Mars orbit on its first attempt. The first was India.

The Hope spacecraft, a $ 200 million project called “Al Amal” in Arabic, was launched on July 20, 2020 from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Center. The UAE project spanned six years and made the Little Sheikh of the Gulf the fifth country in the world to reach Mars, and the first to do so in the Arab world.

The Emirates Mars mission partnered with a team from the University of Colorado to build the Hope spacecraft. But the oil-rich Gulf country itself has spent years investing in space research and development, founding its own space agency in 2014 after launching jointly developed satellites with South Korean partners in 2009 and 2013.

Although not the first country to conduct a mission to Venus and an asteroid landing, the UAE is known for its great activities. It is already home to the world’s tallest building, deepest diving pool, largest shopping mall, and a seemingly endless list of larger-than-life goals designed to advance its image internationally and boost industry. scientific and technological innovation in the country of 10 million inhabitants.

“We have our eyes fixed on the stars because our path to development and progress has no borders, no borders and no limits… With every new breakthrough we make in space, we create opportunities. for young people here on Earth, ”UAE Prime Minister and Dubai Ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum said on Tuesday.