South Korea Seeks To Explore Moon And Mars With UAE

South Korea’s space industry has been closely cooperating in the development of Earth observation satellites with the UAE over the past ten years

The UAE’s successful launch of the Mars Mission, Hope Probe, will serve as a positive impetus to South Korea’s planned lunar mission and pave the way for joint Moon and Mars explorations, a senior official told Emirates News Agency, WAM.

As South Korea is planning to launch a lunar orbiter in 2022, and send a lunar landing module by 2030, “I hope that we share the experience and scientific data, so we can open up a new chapter of our cooperation in space exploration,” said Cheolho Lim, President of Korea Aerospace Research Institute, KARI, which is the aeronautics and space agency of South Korea.

“I believe Korea can greatly benefit from the UAE’s experience and accumulated knowledge in Mars when Korea carries out Mars exploration in future,” he said, adding that both parties can carry out joint Moon and Mars exploration projects in future.

The Hope Probe blasted off from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Centre at 01:58 am on Monday morning and it would travel 493.5 million kilometres over seven months to reach Mars’ orbit in February 2021, coinciding with the UAE’s Golden Jubilee celebrations to mark the historic union of the Emirates.