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The UAE’s first historic mission to Mars is underway, after a successful takeoff in Japan.
The Hope probe launched on an H2-A rocket from the Tanegashima spaceport, and is now on a 500 million-kilometer journey to study the planet’s climate and climate.
Two previous attempts to launch the probe last week had to be suspended due to adverse weather.
Hope’s arrival in February 2021 will coincide with the 50th anniversary of the UAE’s formation.
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The mission will be led from the inn of the Dubai Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center.
Her Excellency Sarah Al Amiri, Hope’s scientific leader, spoke of her excitement and relief at seeing the rocket successfully climb into the sky. And she said that the impact in her country would be the same as in the United States when her people saw the Apollo 11 moon landing 51 years ago, also on July 20.
“He was an anchor for an entire generation that spurred everyone who saw him to go ahead and dream big,” he told BBC News.
“Today I am very happy that children in the Emirates wake up on the morning of July 20 with their own project, a new reality, new possibilities, allowing them to contribute more and create a greater impact in the world.”
The UAE spacecraft is one of three missions heading to Mars this month.
The United States and China have surface rovers in the final stages of preparation. The American mission, Perseverance, sent its congratulations to Hope. “I can’t wait to join you on the journey!” her Twitter account said.
Why is the UAE going to Mars?
The United Arab Emirates has limited experience in designing and manufacturing spacecraft, and yet here it is trying something that only the US, Russia, Europe, and India have managed to do. But it speaks to the ambition of the Emiratis that they should dare to take up this challenge.
Its engineers, guided by American experts, have produced a sophisticated probe in just six years, and when this satellite reaches Mars, it is expected to provide new science, revealing new ideas about how the planet’s atmosphere works.
In particular, scientists think it may increase our understanding of how Mars lost much of its air and, with it, much of its water.
The Hope probe is widely regarded as an inspirational vehicle, something that will attract more young people in the Emirates and across the Arab region to study science at school and higher education.
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The satellite is one of several projects that, according to the UAE government, signals its intention to move the country away from dependence on oil and gas and towards a future based on a knowledge economy.
But as always when it comes to Mars, the risks are high. Half of all missions sent to the Red Planet have ended in failure. Hope project director Omran Sharaf acknowledges the dangers but insists his country is right to try.
“This is a research and development mission and, yes, failure is an option,” he told BBC News.
“However, not progressing as a nation is not an option. And what matters most here is the ability and capacity that the UAE gained from this mission, and the knowledge that it brought to the country.”
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Robotic probe: Hope has taken six years to develop
How has the UAE managed to do this?
The UAE government told the project team that it could not buy the spacecraft from a large foreign corporation; had to build the satellite itself.
This meant partnering with American universities that had the necessary experience. Engineers and scientists from Emirati and the United States worked together to design and build the spacecraft systems and the three instruments on board that will study the planet.
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The mission is part of a policy that seeks to develop the UAE’s knowledge economy
While much of the manufacturing of the satellite occurred at the University of Colorado Atmospheric and Space Physics Laboratory (LASP), Boulder, considerable work was also done at the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center (MBRSC) in Dubai.
Brett Landin of LASP believes that the Emiratis are now in a great place to do another mission on their own.
“I could give you the process to power a spacecraft, but until you put on an escape suit and transfer 800kg of highly volatile rocket fuel from the storage tanks to the spacecraft, you really don’t know what it is like,” said the senior. systems engineer said.
“Their propulsion engineers have done it and they know how to do it the next time they build a spacecraft.”
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ESA / DLR / FU Berlin
Surface characteristics indicate that Mars once had plenty of running water
What science will Hope do on Mars?
The Emiratis did not want to do science “to me too”; they did not want to appear on the Red Planet and repeat measurements that had already been made by others. They then went to an advisory committee of the US space agency (NASA) called the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group (MEPAG) and asked what research a UAE probe could add to the current state of knowledge.
MEPAG’s recommendations framed Hope’s goals. In one line, the UAE satellite will study how energy moves through the atmosphere, from the bottom up, at all times of the day and during all seasons of the year.
It will track features like high dust that on Mars greatly influences the temperature of the atmosphere.
It will also analyze what happens to the behavior of neutral hydrogen and oxygen atoms in the upper part of the atmosphere. There is a suspicion that these atoms play an important role in the continued erosion of the Mars atmosphere by energetic particles that flow away from the Sun.
This plays with the story of why the planet is now losing most of the water it clearly had at the beginning of its history.
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Sarah Al Amiri celebrates with Naohiko Abe of rocket operator Mitsubishi Heavy Industries
To gather her observations, Hope will take a quasi-equatorial orbit away from the planet at a distance of 22,000 km to 44,000 km.
“The desire to see every piece of real estate at any time of the day ended up making the orbit very large and elliptical,” explained the leader of the core scientific team at Hope, David Brain of LASP.
“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 at other times, we will let Mars rotate below us.
“We will get full disk images of Mars, but our camera has filters, so we will do science with those images, getting global views with different goggles, if you like.”
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