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This photo has been used for illustration purposes.
Sasha Ann Bachter, Journalist
At 11:38 a.m. UAE time, just before noon on Sunday, the country was preparing to launch the Rashid rover lunar rover from Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Station in Florida, U.S., where SpaceX will take the Japanese The explorer inside the lander “HAKUTO-R” aboard a “Falcon 9” rocket.
According to the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre, the Rashid rover will land on the lunar surface next year in April 2023, in the Atlas crater at 47.5 degrees north latitude and 44.4 degrees east longitude, in Mare’s The Frigoris region on the southeastern outer rim, or the so-called “cold sea”, is located on the moon’s northernmost tip and was chosen to allow flexibility during mission operations.
SpaceX delayed the launch in order to perform some additional checks before launch, because once launched, the spacecraft carrying the HAKUTO-R lander will take a low-energy path instead of directly approaching the moon.
journey
The first stage separates from the launch vehicle, continues its orbit, once the payload is in orbit, the descent vehicle separates from it, the last part of the vehicle is processed, the descent vehicle then moves to the transition segment orbit and accelerates until it is captured by the Moon’s gravity, then Prepare to land.
The lunar surface, considered the most difficult landing phase of the mission, as the vehicle landed on the complex terrain, the robotic arm extended to prepare Explorer for launch, conducting a series of experiments and providing data to help us Understand the physics of surfaces.
Explorers planned to work on the Moon for one lunar day (14 Earth days).
start window
The launch window began last November at the Kennedy Space Center at the US base in Cape Canaveral and extends until March 2023 next year. The launch window is the time period when special vehicles such as the space shuttle must be launched in order to achieve their goals. Missions to the lunar surface, if the mission does not launch within this time frame, it will have to wait until the next window.
The most important reason for the correct launch time of a spacecraft is that there is no straight path in space flight, especially that all planets orbit the sun in long and curved paths, and their orbit forms are circular and elliptical.
Since Earth-orbit-based flights largely do not require specific launch times, if a spacecraft rendezvous with another vehicle already in orbit, the launch must be timed carefully.
low orbit
The center said the launch phase of the probe will be in a “stop” state and low orbit is one of the most important phases of the mission, where spacecraft operations engineers will take control after separation from the probe. launch vehicle until the launch vehicle is safely in its final lunar orbit.
At the same time, the ground station will operate 24 hours a day to operate, monitor and control the various subsystems of the spacecraft, including any accessories such as landing antennas, solar arrays, reflectors, etc., and perform precise maneuvers to control the orbit and the direction of the rocket .
access and play
The center stated that the phases of entry, descent and dense landing constitute a dangerous phase, especially when the HAKUTO-R lander developed by the Japanese company “iSpace” will perform landing operations on the lunar surface by itself. , just like the lander relies on its own computer to do this by calculating how to launch the rocket in such a way that it maintains its trajectory until it reaches a given point on the lunar surface without being deflected by rocks or the possibility of rocks crater.
The center stated that as soon as the “HAKUTO-R” aircraft landed on the lunar surface, it began the landing operation phase within 4 hours, and then completed the post-landing inspection process, operated equipment, and started preliminary data collection.
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