UAE Moon mission: Landing date of Rashid Rover revealed

UAE Moon mission: Landing date of Rashid Rover revealed

Since being deployed from the rocket, the lander has travelled approximately 1.376 million-kilometres into deep space

Pictured: SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, carrying the Rashid Rover, vertical on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in the United States.

Published: Mon 6 Mar 2023, 2:24 PM

The UAE’s Rashid Rover to the Moon will land on the lunar surface on April 25.

This comes according to a senior official who was speaking at the 17th International Conference on Space Operations (SpaceOps 2023) in Dubai on Monday.

Salmen Al Marri, Director General of the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre, said, “We are on the way to the Moon as we speak. We have chartered about 1.6 million kilometres and now we are looping back in a Japanese lander hoping to land on April 25.”

Recently, ispace, inc., a global lunar exploration company, released an interim success report and announced that its HAKUTO-R Mission 1 lunar lander has travelled to its farthest point from Earth into deep space.

Named after the late Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum, former Ruler of Dubai, the UAE-made Rashid Rover was in the lander that launched on December 11, 2022, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral. Since being deployed