UAE-made MBZ-SAT to blast off to space on January 14 from California
The latest UAE earth-imaging satellite MBZ-SAT will launch on Tuesday, January 14, 10.49pm UAE time from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, United States, the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) said.
This will be the second satellite built entirely by Emirati engineers and it will be launched together with a small, strong CubeSat called HCT-SAT 1.
Scheduled to go up on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket in October 2024, MBZ-SAT (700 kg) went into orbit only to be delayed after technical problems ground the rocket. The satellite is now on the rideshare service by SpaceX, which MBRSC is harnessing to launch.
It will be streamed live starting at 9.30pm U.A.E on the website live.mbrsc.ae.
SpaceX rideshare program, launched in 2019, is cheaper to use than the old-fashioned, expensive launch system. It has already helped to send more than 200 satellites.
"We’ve got a team on-site (of seven people) in the US and a team here at Mission Control in Dubai that’s on standby, all day, every day to get it set up for launch," Director-General MBRSC Salem Humaid Al Marri told a press conference last week.
MBZ-SAT, named after President Sheikh Mohamed, promises to revolutionise Earth observation with unparalleled imaging powers. And the student-constructed CubeSat demonstration is proof of UAE’s willingness to produce its next generation of space travellers.
Today the UAE has 10 satellites orbiting and each with different function, eight more are being built. The MBZ-SAT is fully automated, and produces 10 times more images than MBRSC does now.
Once reconstructed in the UAE, the synthetic satellite was subject to scientific testing. It was then carefully crammed into a special box, fitted with a monitoring system, so that it wouldn’t be lost in transit.
"MBZ-SAT were then transferred to South Korea for environmental testing, which were carried out in cooperation with the MBRSC logistical team," Amer AlSayegh AlGhaferi, project manager (MBZ-SAT) told me. "After the mission had been successfully launched in South Korea, the satellite was sent to SpaceX in the US for final testing before launch.
Marri added that this is a proud moment for everyone in the UAE as it’s the launch of two totally different satellites at the same time in the UAE.
‘One is like a giant satellite built in years, and one that is going back to the ground, trying to educate students and to develop their skills. Through the HCT-SAT, we covered nearly all the emirates of UAE and 50+ students. So that’s a big thing we’re very proud of and that’s kind of part of the real whole cycle of having graduates come here, then go work in the space industry and come back," he said.
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