UAE flies to the Moon

Gulf News

Born from the desert dunes of the UAE, the Emirati-made Rashid Rover has been successfully launched to the Moon today at 11.38am (UAE time) aboard a Japanese-made lunar lander sent to space on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, USA.  See more videos at https://gulfnews.com/videos Read more Gulf News stories here: https://bit.ly/2HLJ2km

Transcript

00:00Music

00:12I'm Abdullah El-Shehhy, I'm leader of the mechanical team in the rover mission, RASHID.

00:19So basically, we are very excited today at Muhannad Baraj Space Center for the launch of the rover.

00:26We have done a lot of preparation for the launch, as for the mechanical team.

00:31We have done a lot of models, starting off from engineering models, very simple models as well, also qualification models.

00:40We have run all the tests required from the mechanical team to have a safe journey to the moon,

00:47starting from the launch phases, vibration, acoustic loads, and the separation loads that come from the launch vehicle.

00:57And then the journey from the orbit of the lander up to the moon itself.

01:04And also the most critical part, which is the shock loads that will happen while the lander lands on the moon,

01:12as it will step on the moon by a shock.

01:16Basically, what we did is that we tested all the vibrations that will happen through different types of models,

01:25different types of materials that we have built the rover on until we reach the final model,

01:32which is the flight model that has been placed inside the lander that will launch today.

01:39My name is Mohammed Zaabi, I'm taking care of the lunar surface operations.

01:44The goal for today is to witness one of the most important milestones for the Miros lunar mission, which is the launch event.

01:56During this launch, we have the rover inside the lander, and we have also the lander inside the rocket.

02:02So both the lander and the rover will go through very tough environments related to the shock and the vibration.

02:11During this, we have the rover secured inside the lander, and after this, we are looking for the first signal from the lander.

02:23With this signal, it will assure that we have a successful deployment for the lander after the launch.

02:31After that, we are expecting the first signal from the rover three days after the launch.

02:36In this case, we are going to analyze the signal to understand the status of the rover.

02:44In terms of the goal of this mission, we have two main goals.

02:51The first one is to build and launch the first Emirati rover to explore the lunar surface.

02:59The second goal is to perform some science-related operations related to understanding the lunar surface.

03:10We have a number of science instruments that are going to be operated on the lunar surface to conduct more scientific experiments.

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