Emirates Mission to the Asteroid Belt (EMA), Asteroid tour, with six flybys and one landing Options

[Greg Hullender]

In the absence of a formal document on the UAE site (I even checked the Arabic pages), I think the article on Space.com had the most information:

The MBR Explorer will visit its first asteroid in 2030, and will follow an orbital path allowing it to pick up speed from several planets along the way.

After passing by six asteroids, the mission aims to touch down upon Justitia in 2034 with a small lander that will deploy from MBR Explorer.

The rest of the mission manifest includes flybys of the asteroids (10254) Westerwald, (623) Chimaera, (13294) Rockox; (88055) 2000 VA28, (23871) 1998 RC76 and (59980) 1999 SG6, all meant to represent "different classes of asteroid with varied compositional types," UAE Space Agency officials said in the same statement. Justitia and Chimaera are around 31 miles (50 kilometers) in diameter, with the remaining asteroids less than 6 miles (10 km) across each.

[mcaplinger]

I think the article on Space.com had the most information...

I think there's more info in https://spaceref.com/science-and-exploratio...s-bold-mission/
and https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/29/science/...id-mission.html (paywalled, sorry.)

[Tom Tamlyn]

Gift link for the NYT article: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/29/science/...;smid=url-share

[Decepticon]

Wil they be using a Lucy design? Looks very similar.

[mcaplinger]

Wil they be using a Lucy design? Looks very similar.

It has two circular solar arrays (presumably ATK Ultraflex arrays like Lucy's) but according to https://www.thenationalnews.com/uae/2023/05...-asteroid-belt/ it will use solar-electric propulsion. Lucy uses a chemical biprop engine. I don't know if the supplier of the spacecraft has been selected yet.