The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has launched a spacecraft to Mars, making it the first Arab country to do so. The uncrewed probe – called the Emirates Mars Mission or Hope – launched from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Center at 6:58 a.m. local time and has now begun a seven-month journey to the red planet. Hope will spend at least two years in orbit around Mars with a possible further two-year extension.
Estimated to cost around $200m, Hope will orbit Mars between 20,000 and 43,000 km from the surface. From there it will investigate the Martian atmosphere, studying daily and seasonal changes in the climate as well as analysing hydrogen and oxygen in Mars’ atmosphere and why the gases are being lost into space. The mission carries three main instruments: two spectrometers – one operating in the infrared and the other in ultraviolet – and an imager that will study the lower atmosphere at visible and ultraviolet wavelengths.
[Hope] is a showcase for how space exploration has become an increasingly international endeavour
Daniel Baker
A UAE-led Mars mission was first mooted in 2014 with the aim of arriving at Mars in 2021 – timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the UAE’s independence from the UK. Funded by the UAE Space Agency, Hope is a collaboration between the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre in Dubai, which will oversee the mission, and the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado, Boulder, which built and tested most of the craft. “Hope will capture the ebbs and flows of weather on Mars to a degree that wasn’t possible before,” says LASP director Daniel Baker. “It’s a showcase for how space exploration has become an increasingly international endeavour.”
UAE fires up space agency with Mars mission
Indeed, Hope is the first of three Mars craft that will be taking off this month. China is planning to launch Tianwen-1 on 23 July. This mission will consist of an orbiter, lander and rover and will, among other things, measure the water and ice content on Mars. Then on 30 July, NASA is scheduled to launch Perseverance – a robotic rover to find signs of ancient, extinct life. Perseverance will also release a small experimental helicopter called Ingenuity, which will attempt a short flight in the Martian atmosphere.
