00:00The launch event was a major milestone of the mission.
00:10The team worked very hard during the past couple of years.
00:14It was an exciting moment.
00:16It shows that the mission is moving on,
00:19that we are launching Rashed after working on it by our hands,
00:23and then seeing it being launched into space at that day.
00:28Of course, launching into space is something very critical,
00:33and always there are risks associated with launching missions into space.
00:38We were very excited, but at the same time,
00:41we had mixed emotions of nervousness,
00:45and also we were worried about whether things will go as planned or not.
00:51Thankfully, after a couple of minutes into the launch sequence,
00:57when it started, things went very well.
01:00And after 40 or 50 minutes, we received the news from Tokyo
01:06that the iSpace Mission Control Center could receive the first signal from Miranda.
01:13The mission is designed to take a low-cost trajectory towards the moon.
01:19The approach that is taken by the lander is to follow a low-cost trajectory throughout the mission.
01:27The idea is that in order to reduce the cost of the mission,
01:31to make it commercially feasible,
01:34it's important to reduce the amount of fuel to be used in order to reach the moon.
01:39There are several ways, several trajectories that you can follow
01:43and that will take you directly to the surface of the moon.
01:47However, the trajectory that was selected for the lander is a special one,
01:53where the lander already did that launch from Earth into low-Earth orbit.
02:01Then after that, it did a flyby by the moon,
02:05and now it's on its way towards the furthest point, which will be around 1.4 million kilometers.
02:14At that point, there will be a deep-space maneuver,
02:18and then there will be a turnaround,
02:21and then the lander will start its trajectory towards inserting itself into the lunar orbit.
02:27Currently, the rover aboard the lander is away from Earth at more than 500,000 kilometers.
02:36It's way beyond the moon orbit.
02:41However, that's the trajectory,
02:46and we are going to reach the furthest point from Earth at 1.4 million kilometers within the next couple of weeks.
02:57Since the announcement of His Highness Sheikh Hamza Rashid about the first contact with the rover,
03:03I'm happy to say that currently we are monitoring the health of Rashid rover on a daily basis on the current days.
03:16The team is establishing contacts with the rover on a daily basis.
03:22The rover is switched on.
03:24Telemetries are gathered and are sent back to our ground station here in Dubai.
03:29We check all the telemetries and we check the status of different subsystems.
03:35We check the thermal system and the temperature at different points on the rover,
03:40as well as we check the status of the battery and whether the battery needs charging or not.
03:46Until this point, all the data received from the rover shows that the rover is in good health,
03:53and things are stable in the rover, and that's a very good sign in our mission.
03:59There will be some critical points in the future, in the coming weeks.
04:04We are looking forward to those points, but we will keep everyone posted and updated once we reach those points.
04:13There are different challenges throughout the mission, different critical points throughout the trajectory towards the moon.
04:20One of the critical points that everyone is looking towards is the deep space maneuver that will happen at the furthest point in the trajectory,
04:32which is, as I said, at 1.4 million kilometers.
04:35At that point, we will be at the furthest point from Earth.
04:40Communication will be very slow, and also the lander will start performing deep space maneuver operations,
04:48which are very critical on the lifespan of the mission.
04:53After that, the lunar orbit insertion is another critical point where any mistake or any off-nominal operation or situation might cause us off-trajectory,
05:07and then the lander will have to do some corrections afterwards.
05:11I think the most critical point, which always causes missions to the surface to fail,
05:18which is the point where the lander will start the landing sequence and will aim to land safely on the lunar surface.
05:27That is a very important point, very critical point, and very few countries could achieve that successfully.
05:33Once that point is achieved by the lander, other critical points and milestones will start to be executed after the safe landing,
05:42which is deploying of the rover, deploying our robotic arm that carries the primary camera, and deploying our antenna, the primary antenna.
05:52Those also are critical points where eventually we will have to drive off the platform that is holding the Russian rover,
06:00and for the first time, the Russian rover will start touching the lunar surface.
06:06Those are all critical points.
06:08We are taking things step by step, and we are focusing right now on monitoring the Russian rover health,
06:15and also putting our eyes towards the next milestone, which is the deep space maneuver that is going to happen at 1.4 million kilometers.
06:24Currently, the Russian rover is inside the rover compartment inside the lander,
06:29and it's being hauled down there through an arm, a deployment arm that is holding the Russian rover inside that compartment.
06:38Once the lander safely lands on the lunar surface, the lander will deploy the arm where that arm holds the Russian rover down,
06:48and then the rover will be released towards the surface.
06:52We will have to do our own operations of deploying the mast, deploying the antenna,
06:59doing our own checkouts on the rover, making sure that all cameras, all instruments, and core systems of the rover are working properly
07:09before releasing the rover from that platform, from that arm, and then start driving off.
07:16As I said, that will be the moment where the rover wheels will start touching the lunar surface,
07:23and I think that will be the big moment of the mission where we can declare that, for the first time,
07:29UAE has reached, hopefully, and touched the lunar surface.
07:34After that, once we make sure that everything is working fine, our science operations and science mission will start,
07:42where we will follow certain trajectories set by our scientists, plans that are defined by our scientists,
07:49that will be checked by our engineers, and then will be executed by the operators.
07:54The plans will follow certain trajectories, the rover will drive to certain science stations, collect data through cameras,
08:00through other science instruments, send them back to our ground station,
08:04definitely will be analyzed and processed by our on-ground systems, and then we will continue.
08:13The whole process, the whole science mission, will last for one lunar day, which is equivalent to 14.75 Earth days.
08:24All our operations will be continuous, 24-7 type of operations, where we will have three shifts,
08:35taking rounds on controlling and operating the RASHID rover, and downloading data generated by the rover.
08:43So we will say to RASHID rover, good night, RASHID.
08:47So RASHID will step into a hibernation mode.
08:53All systems on board will be shut down.
08:57Temperature during the lunar night will drop down to almost 1-80 degrees Celsius,
09:05and then we will wait for two weeks until the sun rises again on the landing site.
09:13We hope that we will do an experimental part of the mission,
09:17where we will hope that the RASHID rover will wake up again after getting energy from the sun.
09:23Systems will boot up again, and the communication system will be listening to us.
09:29If things went very well, and RASHID rover could survive the lunar night,
09:34then we hope that we will be able to communicate with RASHID rover,
09:37and that will be another achievement of the mission, an extended part of the mission,
09:41but it will be a great achievement of the mission,
09:43since it is beyond our objective of doing all the mission within one lunar day.
09:50If everything is healthy, we might continue our operations for a second lunar day.
09:56IMMERSE lunar mission is part of the Mars 2117 program.
10:00This is a very ambitious and with an ultimate goal of building a human settlement on Martian surface after 100 years.
10:10In order to do that, we need to continue developing our capabilities
10:14and the technologies that will allow us to do and to achieve that objective.
10:19Definitely, that means that we need to work with our international partners,
10:25as we are doing right now with the first mission,
10:28and we will continue to do that with our future plans.
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