Dubai, UAE - 07 September 2021: The Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) today announced that the ELM team has completed the thermal vaccum test for the Rashid rover at CNES in Toulouse, France. During this phase, all subsystems in the rover were tested in varied extreme temperatures. 

MBRSC had recently announced its partnership with the French space agency to develop the two optical cameras on board the Rashid rover along with the detector for the microscope imager instrument (CAM-M). The Centre also stated that more partnerships will be announced in due course and will be added to the Emirates Lunar Mission’s science programme.

The Emirates Lunar Mission is one of the initiatives under the Mars 2117 Programme, which aims to build a human colony on Mars, and is funded by the ICT fund of the telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority.