Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com, September 17: on September 16, Wu Yanhua led a delegation to visit the Rashid Space Center in the United Arab Emirates, held talks with Director Elmari, conducted in-depth exchanges on Sino-Arab space cooperation, and signed a memorandum of understanding on cooperation on the Chang'e-7 mission. Chinese Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates Zhang Yiming attended the above activities.

China's Chang'e-7 mission is scheduled to be launched around the end of 2026. According to the memorandum of understanding, Albania will be responsible for the development of the "Rashid II" lunar rover. The Chinese side will provide services such as carrying, monitoring and data receiving of the "Rashid II" lunar rover, and the two sides will share the exploration results of the "Rashid II" lunar rover.

The United Arab Emirates Space Center (MBRSC) announced that the two sides would "cooperate on future lunar missions, including the landing of MBRSC's rover on CNSA's lander", marking "the first joint space program between the United Arab Emirates and China".

It is worth mentioning that MBRSC, which will launch its first lunar rover, Rashid, at the end of this year, is already working with two major private sector partners on its lunar mission.

The mission will be launched by the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, and the 22-pound (10-kilogram) Rashid will land on the Hakuto-R lander built by Tokyo company ispace, which can be called a joint effort of the United Arab Emirates, China, Japan and the United States.

The UAE lunar mission aims to learn more about lunar dust, lunar soil and airless celestial bodies (space objects that lack atmosphere).

According to Adnan Alrice, director of the MBRSC Mars 2117 project, one of the experiments will determine the materials used in the spacesuit or the landing system used to put a man on the moon.

The 10-kilogram Rashid lunar rover will land on the moon on ispace's lander. The lander weighs 240 kilograms, 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 orbit, it will go to the moon on its own, land and unload the lunar rover. The lander will be powered by solar panels, allowing the lunar rover to communicate with the earth.

The rover will carry six instruments with a total weight of less than 10 kilograms. It will use two high-resolution cameras, a microscopic camera and a thermal imaging camera to collect data and images and send them back to Earth.

The United Arab Emirates believes that China's record of lunar exploration is impressive, so it is also very meaningful to cooperate with China in future lunar exploration. CTOnews.com learned that China has launched three lunar missions in the past decade, all of which have been a complete success.

Chang'e-3 landed on the moon in December 2013, and Chang'e-4 landed on the moon in January 2019, and both missions are still in progress. In addition, 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 a wealth of experience in space exploration, such as sending its first astronaut, Hazza Al Mansouri, to the International Space Station in the fall of 2019. Another UAE astronaut, Sultan AlNeyadi, will also travel to the International Space Station next year and stay in space for six months, that is, SpaceX's Crew-6 mission for NASA.

In 2020, the United Arab Emirates launched a Mars exploration mission to send 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 developing an asteroid belt mission with the goal of launching in the late 1920s.

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