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The United Arab Emirates has unveiled a flight-ready probe designed to land on asteroid 269 Justitia as part of its Emirates Mission to the Asteroid Belt (EMA). The mission is planned to launch from Japan in the first quarter of 2028, but neither launch nor landing has happened yet. The probe is a deployable payload carried by the MBR Explorer spacecraft—not a separate spacecraft that will visit all seven asteroids.

What the UAE unveiled

On 1 October 2026, the Technology Innovation Institute (TII) revealed the UAE-built probe for EMA. TII says the probe was designed, built and tested in Abu Dhabi and has reached flight readiness. It is the mission’s only deployable payload.

The unveiling display included a half-scale model, according to Space.com; that model should not be confused with the flight hardware. TII and Dubai Protocol also use the word “probe” for the vehicle commonly described as a lander.

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How the seven-asteroid mission is planned to work

EMA has two distinct spacecraft elements. The MBR Explorer is the carrier spacecraft; it will make the journey through the asteroid belt and conduct the planned flybys. The probe will remain aboard until the final target, then separate and attempt an autonomous descent to Justitia.

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“Seven asteroids” refers to six planned flybys followed by the final encounter with 269 Justitia—not seven landings. The six flyby targets are Westerwald, Chimaera, Rockox, Ghaf, Ousha and Moza, according to Space.com.

Launch, journey and landing schedule

The UAE government says the launch is planned for the first quarter of 2028 from Japan. The UAE Space Agency’s mission page search result specifies March, but schedules can change; the launch has not occurred. Dubai Protocol describes the probe’s planned journey aboard MBR Explorer as approximately 5 billion km.

The final encounter year is not settled in the available official and current reporting. Space.com projects a 2036 rendezvous with Justitia, while older UAE Space Agency schedule material surfaced in search results lists 2033 and 2034 milestones. These dates should not be treated as a confirmed landing date.

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What the probe is meant to study

TII says the probe is designed to take close-range images and excavate Justitia’s surface to investigate its composition and physical characteristics. Those are planned capabilities and objectives, not findings: the probe has not reached the asteroid or returned data from it.

The wider EMA mission aims to study asteroid composition, origins and evolution, with particular interest in water-rich asteroids and possible resource potential. Justitia’s unusual red appearance has prompted scientific interpretations that it may have originated in the outer Solar System; that remains an interpretation, not a discovery by EMA.

A 7 September 2026 arXiv preprint analyzes about a decade of ATLAS photometry for the mission’s seven targets and reports preliminary classifications and rotation results. It flags uncertainty for Ghaf and Ousha. This is ground-based characterization of the targets, not data from the UAE mission.

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Who is building and integrating the mission

The UAE Space Agency leads EMA. TII says it designed, built and tested the probe in Abu Dhabi in collaboration with the agency, HEX20, Khalifa University and the National Space Science and Technology Center at United Arab Emirates University. Dubai Protocol identifies the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado Boulder as the planned site for integrating the probe with MBR Explorer.

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Dubai Protocol reports that the national mission team includes more than 150 specialized engineers and scientists. It also reports AED 44 billion in UAE space-sector investment over the past decade; that figure is the government’s reported total for that period.

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Why the announcement matters—and what remains ahead

Flight readiness is a development milestone, not proof that the mission has launched or that a landing will succeed. The next major steps include transport of the probe to Colorado for final integration with MBR Explorer, followed by launch and the long planned journey through the asteroid belt. Each future milestone remains subject to the mission’s schedule and execution.

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Faisal Al Bannai, Advisor to the UAE President for Strategic Research and Advanced Technology and Secretary General of the Advanced Technology Research Council, said: “The EMA probe demonstrates what becomes possible when advanced research is translated into mission-ready engineering.”

Dr. Ahmad Belhoul Al Falasi, Minister of Sports and Chairman of the UAE Space Agency, said the probe’s flight readiness reflects the growth of the UAE’s national space ecosystem and its ability to develop technologies, connect national institutions and companies, and build specialized supply chains.

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