KEY POINTS

  • The Rashid Rover weighs about 22 pounds
  • The lander is expected to reach the Moon in April 2023
  • It will spend a lunar day (equivalent of 14 Earth days) on the Moon's surface

The launch of the first Emirati mission to the moon has been postponed to Dec. 1, Thursday, the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre announced Wednesday.

Rashid Rover will take off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida for a five-month journey to the moon at 12.37 pm (UAE time) on Dec. 1. Once launched, the integrated spacecraft will take a low-energy route to the moon instead of a direct approach.

This is not the first time the mission has been postponed. It was originally set to launch on Nov. 22, and then on Nov. 28. Most recently, it was scheduled to take place on Nov. 30.

In a tweet Wednesday, SpaceX said: "Standing down from launch of ispace's HAKUTO-R Mission 1 to allow for additional pre-flight checkouts; now targeting Thursday, December 1 at 3:37 a.m. ET for liftoff."

The Rover is currently safely stored inside the Japanese-made lunar lander Hakuto-R M1 (mission 1), which will be carried to space by the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

The Rashid Rover, which weighs about 22 pounds, will fly to the Moon on Mission 1. The lander is expected to reach the Moon in April 2023. It will attempt to land on the Moon's Atlas Crater on the south-eastern outer edge of the Mare Frigoris or Sea of Cold.

Its landing site was chosen to be the Atlas crater to allow for greater operational flexibility.

The four-wheel rover was built by a small team of Emirati experts at the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre in Dubai. It will spend a lunar day – the equivalent of 14 Earth days – on the Moon's surface to study its geology and lunar dust. The rover has been equipped with high-resolution cameras to take a carousel of images of the Moon's surroundings and characterize its electrically charged environment.

If the mission is successful, the UAE will become the fourth country in the world to land a rover on the moon's surface, joining an elite group of space-faring nations that includes the United States, Russia, China, and India.

The Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) will stream the event live on their channel (www.mbrsc.ae/lunar), beginning at 10.30 a.m. (UAE time) - 1:30 a.m. EST.

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