Mission Control Space Services said Wednesday it will supply the wireless communications technology for the United Arab Emirates’ Rashid Rover 2, a rover bound for the far side of the Moon in 2027 aboard a Firefly Aerospace lander.
United Arab Emirates’ Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) picked the Ottawa maker of mission-operations and autonomy software for the job, the company said. The release says the technology will give the rover real-time connectivity with its supporting infrastructure.
Rashid Rover 2 will ride on Firefly’s Blue Ghost Mission 2, which Firefly lists as launching no earlier than 2027. Chief technology officer Michele Faragalli called Mission Control’s contribution “mission-critical lunar infrastructure” in the release.
The company says the technology was first developed with support from the Canadian Space Agency. Mission Control calls Rashid Rover 2 its fourth contribution to a lunar rover mission. The release lists two earlier rover missions, one of them the first Rashid rover, and BEACON, a joint demonstration with Astrobotic Technology that is still in development.
The first Rashid rover launched in December 2022 on ispace’s Hakuto-R lander, alongside Mission Control’s AI flight computer, a collaboration SpaceQ wrote about in 2021. The lander crashed in April 2023 with that rover aboard.
BEACON is due to fly on Astrobotic’s Griffin-1 lander. SpaceQ reported in June that the lander is tentatively set to launch in late 2026.
Mission Control is also one of three companies the Canadian Space Agency awarded contract to in July 2025 to study Canada’s own planned Lunar Utility Rover.