The Emirates Hope Mission, scheduled to launch this Friday is the first Arab attempt to reach the Red Planet. This is how the UAE will strive to make history.
The Hope, or Al Amal, spacecraft was supposed to launch today from the Tanegashima Space Center in Japan, but bad weather has brought the launch to Friday, July 17th. The 3,000-pound (1,350-kilogram) spacecraft, essentially a Martian weather satellite, will be delivered into space and pushed toward Mars atop a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries H-2A rocket. Come Friday you can wfix action here.
Hope, which will enter orbit around Mars in February 2021, will be used to study the planet’s atmosphere and climate. Assuming all goes well, this will mark the first Arab mission to Mars, or any other planet for that matter.
The Emirates Mars Mission (EMM) is one of three missions scheduled to the Red Planet during the launch window now open, the others being NASA’s Perseverance rover, which will launch in two weeks, and China’s Tianwen-1 lander. (Tthe european and russian ExoMars’ mission had to be postponed due to technical delays and the covid-19 pandemic.) This launch window occurs once every 26 months, offering the most direct route from Earth to the Red Planet.
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Here are five things know about this historical mission.
Made in the UAE – but With a little help from friends
In process since 2013, the Hope project was planned, managed and implemented by an Emirati team, with supervision and funding from the UAE Space Agency, according to Arab News.
That cost The UAE will build some $ 200 million, which includes launch costs contracted by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. That is a fairly modest price considering the $ 670 million that cost NASA to build the MAVEN spacecraft, a comparable mission launched to Mars in 2013. Still, nothing compares to the Indian Mars Orbiter Mission, with its remarkably low price of $ 74 million.
The United Arab Emirates had never embarked on a project like this, so it intelligently sought the expertise of American institutions, including the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado Boulder, which had previously worked on the MAVEN mission. Like BBC reports, Emirati and the American engineers collaborated in the design and manufacture of the spacecraft.
“It’s one thing to tell someone how to ride a bike, but until you’ve done it, you really don’t understand what it’s like. Well, it’s the same with a spaceship, ”Brett Landin, LASP senior systems engineer, told the BBC. “I could give you the process to power a spaceship, but until you put on an escape suit and transfer 800kg [1,765 pounds] of highly volatile rocket fuel from the storage tanks to the spacecraft, you really don’t know what it’s like. “
Fair point.
A point of national pride
The Emirates Hope Mission will coincide with the UAE’s next 50th anniversary as a nation, which probably won’t coincidence.
Speaking to SpaceflightNow, Omran Sharaf, EMM project manager, said the “mission identity is not just about the UAE, but also the Arab world”. The mission is supposed to “inspire young Arabs and send them a message of hope, and a message that basically tells them that if a country like the United Arab Emirates can reach Mars in less than 50 years, then you can do a lot more given the history you have, given the human talent you have, “he said.
An Arab expedition to Mars will undoubtedly awaken a renewed sense of national pride, but the mission is also expected to “inspire future Arab generations to pursue space science.” according to the EMM website. Furthermore, a “future-proof and sustainable economy is a knowledge-based economy,” writes the UAE Space Agency.
Investing in STEM fields, and space technology in particular, is a smart move for the UAE, especially in consideration of oil prices.
A single orbit for doing science
Once on Mars, Hope will enter a unique equatorial orbit high above the Red Planet. Moving in the same direction as the planet’s rotation, Hope will complete a single orbit once every 55 hours or so. This will allow the probe instruments to target a single target for extended periods.
“The desire to see every piece of real estate at every moment of the day ended up making the orbit very large and elliptical,” LASP scientist David Brain told the BBC. By making those decisions, for example, we will be able to fly over Olympus Mons (the largest volcano in the Solar System) as Olympus Mons moves through different times of the day. And on other occasions, we will let Mars rotate below us, “to which he added:” We will get full images of Mars, but our camera has filters, so we will do science with those images, obtaining global views with different protective glasses, if it you want. “
Oooh, a new and fresh view of Olympus Mons? We can not wait
The first meteorological satellite for mars
Once in orbit, Hope will study the Martian atmosphere on a global scale. The data collected by the probe will be used to track changes based on the influence of changing seasons and as the Martian day turns into night. The probe will also be used to study the planet’s hydrogen and oxygen, part of which is filtering into space; Hope will study weather patterns in the lower and middle atmospheres to find out why.
The Hope probe should also answer questions about the early history of Mars and how this planet, once wet and covered by a thick atmosphere, became the cold, dry and desolate place it is today.
yesBy viewing the meteorological satellite that it is, the probe will improve our understanding of severe weather conditions on Mars, including gigantic dust towers and global dust storms that appear from time to time, like the epic one which ended the Opportunity mission in 2018.
“We are the first meteorological satellite of Mars” explained Sarah al-Amiri, deputy project manager for the Hope mission, during a webinar in June. “Past missions have only sporadically studied atmospheric conditions, looking for specific locations at specific times. It’s like I’m telling you to study the Earth at different times of the day in Alaska, London, and the UAE, and then be able to form a complete picture of the weather and climate, “he said.
At a broader conceptual level, the Hope satellite will assist scientists trying to assess the planet’s priorities. or even current ability to embrace life. And in addition to refining our sense of Mars as a geological system, Hope will prepare scientists for a future manned mission to the Red Planet, according to the UAE Space Agency.
Three tools for work
To meetl these ambitious goals, the Hope spacecraft is equipped with three primary scientific instruments: a camera, an infrared spectrometer, and an ultraviolet spectrometer.
Called Emirates eXploration Imager (EXI), the camera will capture high-resolution images of Mars, measure the depth of water ice in the atmosphere, and study the Martian ozone layer, among other things.
The Emirates Mars Infrared Spectrometer (EMIRS) will scan the lower Martian atmosphere in the infrared band, allowing observations of dust, ice clouds, and water vapor. This instrument can also take the temperature from the surface and the lower atmosphere.
The Emirates Mars Ultraviolet Spectrometer (EMUS) will be used to measure the distribution of carbon monoxide, oxygen, and hydrogen at various altitudes and during Martian seasons. Using these data, scientists will compile a three-dimensional map, which shows the distribution of oxygen and hydrogen in the atmosphere.
Hope should dramatically improve our understanding of the Red Planet, but we’ll have to wait until early next year for the data to start coming. Best of luck to the UAE as a team prepare for this Historic release on Friday.
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