United Arab Emirates to launch first lunar rover in November

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The United Arab Emirates will launch its first lunar rover in November. The mission manager told a state-linked newspaper on Monday that the “Rashid” rover, named for Dubai’s ruling family, would be launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida sometime in November. The exact date will be announced next month. The rover is to be launched aboard a Falcon 9 SpaceX rocket and deposited on the moon by a Japanese ispace lander sometime in March. If successful, the UAE and Japan would join the U.S., Russia and China as the only countries that have landed spacecraft on the lunar surface.