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UAE ramps up space ambitions with Arab world’s first Moon mission

With its orbiter Hope on its way to Mars, the United Arab Emirates has now set its sights on the Moon.
  1. Elizabeth Gibney
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The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has announced plans to send a compact rover named Rashid to study the Moon in 2024, marking an intensification in the small nation’s spacefaring ambitions. If Rashid is successful, the UAE could become only the fourth country to operate a craft on the Moon’s surface, and the first in the Arab world.

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Nature 587, 186-187 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-03054-1

Updates & Corrections

  • Correction 12 November 2020: The original version of this article stated that, if successful, the UAE Space Agency will be the fifth to land a lunar rover. This has been corrected to say that the UAE will be the fourth country, and that so far only China, the former Soviet Union and the United States have achieved this. Also, the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre, and not the UAE Space Agency, will be leading the Rashid mission.

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