Overview
- UAE officials say the flight-identical MBR Explorer has completed vibration testing and is undergoing thermal vacuum cycles as final performance checks and a flight‑readiness review are prepared.
- Mission managers plan to ship the probe to Colorado for integration later in the test campaign and stress that the March 2028 three‑week launch window is fixed because the gravity‑assist trajectory cannot be reworked.
- The mission will use Venus, Earth and Mars flybys on an eight‑year, five‑billion‑kilometre cruise to conduct fly-bys of six asteroids before reaching 269 Justitia in 2036.
- At Justitia the spacecraft will release a simple, unpropelled impact probe that will descend ballistically for two to three hours and strike at roughly 15–27 m/s with any post‑impact data expected to last 20–50 minutes.
- UAE leaders frame the programme as an industrial strategy: more than 150 Emirati engineers are on the national team, about half the project work is with UAE private firms, and around 80% of probe work was done by UAE engineers while international partners support integration and science.