The Technology Innovation Institute unveiled a gold-wrapped, Abu Dhabi-built space probe in October that will travel five billion kilometers aboard the MBR Explorer to study the 58-kilometer-wide asteroid 269 Justitia, ultimately executing a terminal crash landing to excavate and analyze the ancient body’s subsurface composition.
Building the Emirates Mission to the Asteroid Belt Payload
Designed, built, and tested in Abu Dhabi, the deployable probe serves as the singular landing element of the Emirates Mission to the Asteroid Belt. The Technology Innovation Institute developed the hardware in collaboration with the UAE Space Agency, HEX20, Khalifa University, and UAE University’s National Space Science and Technology Center. Engineers spent roughly two years bringing the hardware together before subjecting it to thermal-vacuum testing and three-axis attitude rig simulations.
Strict mass limits forced engineers to abandon early concepts for a soft-landing system. Anton Ivanov, executive director of the Propulsion and Space Research Center, noted that while the team initially considered a non-propulsive soft landing, mass constraints made it unfeasible. The probe will ship to Colorado for integration with the main spacecraft ahead of a March 2028 launch from Japan.
Traveling Five Billion Kilometers to 269 Justitia
The MBR Explorer will spend eight years traversing the solar system. The solar-powered spacecraft will utilize gravity assists from Venus, Earth, and Mars, enduring extreme temperature swings while conducting fly-bys of six distinct asteroids. After reaching 269 Justitia, the main spacecraft will orbit the asteroid for approximately seven months to map its surface and analyze its gravitational field.
Justitia presents a distinct scientific target due to its unusual reddish spectrum. Located in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter, the 54 to 58-kilometer-wide body shares spectral characteristics with icy objects in the Kuiper Belt. Elias Tsoutsanis, chief researcher at the Technology Innovation Institute, suggested the rock may have originated in the distant outer solar system before migrating inward during planetary formation.
Probe Will Strike Justitia to Expose Subsurface Material
Because the MBR Explorer cannot safely approach within a few kilometers of the asteroid’s surface, the main spacecraft will release the probe for an autonomous drop. The probe will experience a ballistic descent lasting two to three hours without any onboard propulsion to slow its speed. It will strike Justitia at velocities between 15 and 27 meters per second.
Engineers expect the impact to create a small crater that exposes unweathered material beneath the upper layer. As the probe falls, an attitude-control system will keep its wide-angle and narrow-angle cameras focused on the target. If the structure survives the impact, onboard batteries will power operations for another 20 to 50 minutes, allowing the system to transmit a critical final close-up image.
UAE Develops Low-Power Edge AI Platform for Probe
Alongside its planetary science objectives, the mission highlights sovereign technology development within the UAE space sector, which has drawn AED44 billion in investments. The Technology Innovation Institute engineered a low-power data processing unit specifically for the probe to securely handle image capture. Consuming approximately three watts of power, the architecture functions as an edge artificial intelligence platform with potential terrestrial applications in defense, aerial monitoring, and autonomous exploration.
