The vehicle will be another regional first — and it is smaller than any rover to have landed on the moon.
To date, China’s 310-pound (140-kilogram) Yutu rovers are the lightest to have made lunar landings, in 2013 and 2019. But the UAE’s will weigh less than a tenth of that. Around 21 inches (54 centimeters) long and wide, and and 3.3 inches (8.5 centimeters) tall, it will weigh approximately 22 pounds (10 kilograms) with its payload.
Set to launch in 2024, the Emirates Lunar Mission aims to travel to a part of the moon that has never been reached by a rover. The exact landing site has not yet been revealed, but the objective is to better understand how lunar dust and rocks vary across the moon.
“If you think about the world and say that you visited 10 places, you can’t say that you know the entire Earth — so it’s the same with the moon,” says Sara Al Maeeni, a project scientist from the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center in Dubai. “We’re expecting to see new things at the new site,…
The post The UAE’s tiny lunar rover will face large challenges on the moon appeared first on CaymanMama.com | News.
from CaymanMama.com | News https://ift.tt/3sH6o1a
No comments:
Post a Comment