UAE's maiden lunar rover 'Rashid' has an Indian connect

If all goes well, UAE's Lunar Rover 'Rashid' will roll its way onto the Lunar surface, a short while after landing in April 2023. The first-ever lunar rover of the United Arab Emirates lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on December 11th on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The Rashid rover is riding on Hakuto-R, a Japanese Lunar lander engineered by the private firm ispace. If successful, this will be the first commercial spacecraft to make a controlled landing on the moon.

Weighing 10kg, the Rashid rover is built by Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre, of the UAE's National Space Agency. The manufacture and supply of the rover's structural parts, reveal the rover's India connection. ST Advanced Composites(STAC), a private firm in southern India had manufactured the composite parts that went into the making of the rover. The firm also supplies advanced composite materials such as metallic and carbon fibre for India's space agency and government-run defence firms and few global space technology
companies.

"In space missions, we are talking about materials that are at least 10 times lighter and 5 times stronger than steel. We built the rover's structures using magnesium alloy, carbon fibre and aluminium" said Dr. Devendran Thirunavukarasu, Director, STAC.

On the Lunar surface, the four-wheeled rover is expected to spend up to two lunar days(approximately 28earth days). It is expected to touch down in the Atlas Crater in the Northeast part of the moon. The launch of UAE's lunar mission comes a while after NASA's Artemis I mission, which is a preliminary step to return man to the moon.

Around mid-2023, India is also expected to launch its third lunar mission. While the first Indian Lunar Mission Chandrayaan-1 was an orbiter-only study of the moon, the second mission Chandrayaan-2 was an orbiter, lander &rover configuration. However, the soft landing of the lander rover turned out to be a failure. It is to perform the maiden Lunar landing that the Indian Space agency ISRO will be carrying out Chandryaan-3 next year.

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