Updated: July 16, 2020 7:01:36 am
The Emirates Mars Mission called “Hope” was announced in 2015 with the goal of creating humanity’s first integrated model of the Red Planet atmosphere.
The launch of the first United Arab Emirates (UAE) mission to Mars has been delayed two days due to bad weather conditions. The UAE’s Hope spacecraft was scheduled to take off from its launch site, the Tanegashima Space Center, in Japan on July 14. The mission is now scheduled for launch on July 16.
The spacecraft must take off from Earth during a brief launch window in July, as Earth and Mars orbit around the Sun at different speeds and align at their closest points only once every two years.
What is the mission?
The Emirates Mars Mission called “Hope” was announced in 2015 with the goal of creating humanity’s first integrated model of the Red Planet atmosphere.
Hope weighs over 1,500 kg and will carry scientific instruments mounted on one side of the spacecraft, including the Emirates eXploration Imager (EXI), which is a high-resolution camera, the Emirates Mars Ultraviolet Spectrometer (EMUS), a far-flung ultraviolet spectrograph. , the Emirates Mars Infrared Spectrometer (EMIRS) and the FTIR scanning spectrometer.
The spacecraft will orbit Mars to study the Martian atmosphere and its interaction with outer space and solar winds. Hope will collect data on Martian climate dynamics, which should help scientists understand why the atmosphere of Mars is breaking down in space.
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In 2015, MAVEN team members showed how the planet’s atmospheric gas is being lost in space.
In 2017, NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft revealed that the solar wind and radiation had stripped the planet’s Martian atmosphere, which could have sustained life billions of years ago. In 2015, MAVEN team members showed how the planet’s atmospheric gas is being lost in space. This means that the atmosphere of Mars is too cold and thin to provide stability to liquid water, which is essential for life. But the evidence, in the form of features that resemble dry river beds and minerals that can only form in the presence of liquid water, indicates that the ancient Martian atmosphere was much warmer, allowing water to flow on its surface.
Therefore, scientists want to study past environments that would have existed on Mars to understand how the habitability of a planet can change over time.
What does the mission plan to accomplish?
Once launched, Hope will orbit Mars for about 200 days, after which it will enter the red planet’s orbit in 2021, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the founding of the United Arab Emirates. The mission is being carried out by the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Center, the UAE space agency.
“It will help answer key questions about the Martian global atmosphere and the loss of hydrogen and oxygen gases in space over the course of a Martian year,” says the mission’s website.
The spacecraft will collect data, 1,000 GB, according to the UAE’s Ministry of Cabinet Affairs, and information that will allow scientists to build a model of the Martian atmosphere, giving them clues as to why the atmosphere changed, to search for a connection between the current weather on Mars. and the one that existed, study the mechanisms of loss from the atmosphere of Mars and investigate how the lower and upper levels of the planet’s atmosphere are connected.
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But why Mars?
It boils down primarily to the possibility that the atmosphere of Mars was ever warm enough to allow water to flow through its surface, which could mean that life also existed there.
What makes scientists curious about Mars is the “defining question” of the existence of life on the planet, due to the possible presence of liquid water on it, either in the past or preserved on its subsurface. This question makes the planet more intriguing to scientists, since “almost everywhere we find water on Earth, we find life,” as NASA says.
Furthermore, if Mars harbored a warmer atmosphere that allowed water to flow in its ancient past (3.5-3.8 billion years ago), and if microbial life existed on it, it may exist in “special regions” even today. But regardless of whether life existed on Mars or not, there is an idea that humans themselves might one day be able to inhabit the planet.
Hope is the first mission of the Arab world on Mars. In addition to the UAE, the US, China, and the European Space Agency have future missions to Mars planned. According to the Planetary Society, Mars has historically been “hostile” to Earth’s attempts to visit it, and more missions have been planned to reach Mars than any other planet or place in the solar system except the Moon.
But 1996, the society notes, marked a Renaissance for the exploration of Mars, with data from four orbiters and four ground missions that developed a revolutionary vision of Mars as an Earth-like world.
NASA will launch its Perseverance rover, part of its Mars 2020 mission, between July 30 and August 15 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The rover will explore ancient habitability, look for signs of ancient life, collect samples of rock and soil that could be returned to Earth, and demonstrate technology for future robotic and human explorations.
Has any human set foot on Mars yet?
No human being has ever set foot on Mars yet because the atmosphere on Mars is very thin, consisting mainly of breathable oxygen-free carbon dioxide, making it difficult for astronauts to survive. Furthermore, the landscape of Mars is freezing, with no protection from the Sun’s radiation or dust storms. Therefore, more research, technology, and testing are required in order to send humans to Mars. NASA plans to do so by the 2030s.
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