The mission intends to explore and land on 50-kilometer wide rock Justitia.

The United Arab Emirates Space Agency has unveiled plans to build a spacecraft for its first mission to the Solar System’s Asteroid Belt. It will explore the rocks for potential water and will attempt to land on a rare “red” asteroid called (269) Justitia. 

The spacecraft is expected to launch in 2028 and reach the first target asteroid in 2030 after a 5-billion-kilometer journey using the gravity of Venus, Earth and Mars as speed boosters.

The UAE currently has a probe called Hope that orbits Mars since 2021, collecting data about the planet’s atmosphere.

The Main Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter is dominated by four worlds — Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, and Hygiea.

Yet the spacecraft will visit other seven asteroids: are (10254) Westerwald, (623) Chimaera, (13294) Rockox, (88055) 2000 VA28, (23871) 1998 RC76 and (59980) 1999 SG6, and (269) Justitia.

The latter, which is 50 kilometers in diameter, is believed to have complex organic materials on its surface, with one theory stating that it was formed close to Neptune.

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The spacecraft will approach within a 150-kilometer range of its targets at speeds of up to 33,000 km/hour. It will observe (269) Justitia during high-speed flybys using a high-resolution camera, a thermal infrared camera, a mid-wavelength spectrometer and an infrared spectrometer. A lander will be released on the red asteroid’s surface to analyze its soils and take pictures of its landscape.

The first asteroid a human-built machine ever landed is 433 Eros. NASA’s NEAR Shoemaker touched it in 2001 at a distance of 315 million kilometers from Earth.