UAE launches its historic 'Hope Probe' spacecraft to red planet

Tokyo, July 20: Marking itself as an interplanetary country in the space world, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) launched its first mission to the red planet the 'Hope Probe'. It was launched from Japan's Tanegashima Space Center at 06.58 local times on Monday calling it 'Al-Amal'.

 

 

The launch initially planned for July 15, had been delayed for five days due to bad weather. Just over an hour after launch, the probe deployed solar panels to power its systems and established radio communication with the mission on earth. Hope will travel 493 million kilometers in space. It will spend 7 months traveling through deep space until February 2021 to put itself into an elongated orbit around Mars for whole mars year 687 days.

 

 

Hope, about the size of a small car, carries three instruments: a camera, infrared spectrometer, and ultraviolet spectrometer. It is aimed at studying the weather on Mars where it will orbit and send back data about the atmosphere. It will provide a comprehensive image of the weather dynamics in the red planet’s atmosphere. It will observe the weather phenomena on Mars such as the massive famous dust storms that have been known to engulf the Red Planet, as compared to the short and localised dust storms on Earth.

 

 

 

According to the minister for advanced sciences Sarah Amiri, the Emirates Mars Mission has cost $200m (£155.8m). UAE has an ambitious plan for a Mars settlement by 2117. The probe is a foundation for a much bigger goal – building a human settlement on Mars within the next 100 years.

 

The UAE first announced plans for the mission in 2014 and launched a National Space Programme in 2017 to develop local expertise. Emiratis and Dubai’s Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) worked with US educational institutions to develop and build the Hope Probe. According to the US space agency Nasa, in October Mars will be a comparatively short 38.6m miles (62m km) from Earth.

 

The UAE has successfully put three Earth observation satellites into orbit. Two were developed by South Korea and launched by Russia, and a third it's own was launched by Japan. On the other hand, the U.S. and China are also launching their own Mars missions this month. NASA’s Perseverance rover will be launching on the 30th of July. The rover will land on the Martian surface and look for ancient microbial life ahead of proposed manned missions. Meanwhile, China hasn’t specified a launch date yet, though it’s planning for late July as well.