600 requirements, two years of work, and a few minutes to send back what matters

Technology Innovation Institute (TII)’s probe for asteroid Justitia is the result of nearly two years of engineering and more than 600 design requirements for the Emirates Mission for Asteroids (EMA). Now, with limited bandwidth and only a brief window after touchdown, the challenge is choosing which data to send home.

Dr Elias Tsoutsanis, Chief Researcher, Propulsion and Space Research Centre, TII explains why that decision matters to Abu Dhabi’s growing space capability.  “So, we took all these requirements, translated them into actionable items to do all the testing, all the development,” he said, calling it ‘very meticulous design process, systems engineering’.

Those numbers frame the challenge facing the probe TII developed for the UAE’s asteroid mission to Justitia. Its cameras and instruments are intended to help reveal the asteroid’s dimensions and surface composition. But collecting information is only part of the task: the team must also decide what is important enough to transmit.

“You have to, let’s say, identify what information you want to keep,” he said to Gulf News.

In deep space, computing power and bandwidth are limited. “It’s a matter of bandwidth,” Dr. Tsoutsanis said.

The probe can potentially classify images onboard, selecting useful ones to send to the main spacecraft rather than attempting to transmit everything. “We don’t need to send everything back,” he added.

That trade-off could become especially pressing around touchdown. The lander is expected to have a few minutes of battery life afterwards.

If communication is available, the team hopes to send information about the lander’s immediate environment. But Dr Tsoutsanis says capturing clear images of the probe’s approach to Justitia is a priority. “For us, that is the most important one,” he added.

The probe itself was built by the UAE engineering team over one and a half to almost two years, after the UAE Space Agency assigned the task to TII.

Dr Tsoutsanis says the work involved meticulous systems engineering and extensive environmental testing to make sure the assembled equipment could withstand the conditions of space, reflecting how far the Nation has come in terms of deep-space technology.

“If something is not meeting the criteria, then we have to do another test campaign,” he said, stressing the importance of environmental test campaigns, which may require a detailed setup to do extensive testing before the integration and sending the spacecraft to the space mission.

The mission also involves UAE engineers and researchers training in Colorado as part of the wider national team. Together, those efforts make the probe more than a scientific instrument: it is a practical test of the engineering expertise being developed in Abu Dhabi and across the UAE’s space sector.

“UAE is a unique place where we can attract the best talent. We aim to leverage the expertise that we have on the ground in order to train and develop the next generation of engineers,” he said.

Asteroids can preserve clues to the early solar system, according to Dr Tsoutsanis, including material that may help scientists understand how planets formed and how matter moved through the system.

The probe’s soft touch on Justitia is intended to help reveal what the asteroid is made of. But with data capacity constrained, the mission’s success will also depend on making the right observations count.