The first of three internationals missions to Mars It launches on Tuesday when a Japanese H-2A rocket powers a UAE spacecraft known as “Hope” in space for a seven-month trip to the red planet. It will be the first interplanetary mission ever attempted by an Arab nation.
A little more than a week later, China plans to launch its Tianwen 1 mission, sending its first orbiter and a surface rover to Mars as NASA goes ahead with the launch of the agency’s $ 2.4 billion. Perseverance rover from Mars, equipped with a small drone helicopter on July 30. All three will reach their goal in 2021.
All three missions are taking advantage of a planetary launch window that only appears once every 26 months when Earth and Mars are in favorable positions in their orbits around the sun. This year’s launch window closes in mid-August, and any delayed spacecraft will then go through two years of expensive storage.
UAE Space Agency
The European Space Agency had planned to join Emirates, the United States, and China, sending a powerful rover to Mars during the current window. But ESA was recently forced to retreat to the next window, mainly due to problems with the parachutes needed to help lower the rover to the Martian surface.
And so the UAE will lead the way this year with the Emirates Mars Mission, and if all goes well with Tuesday’s launch, Hope will go into orbit around Mars next February to begin a complex mission to shed new light on the physics and chemistry of the Martian environment.
But, officials say, science is just a goal of the $ 200 million mission. It also serves as the centerpiece of an Emirates initiative that began in 2014 to motivate young people in the Middle East to pursue careers in science and engineering as the UAE makes a planned transition from an oil-based economy to one based on knowledge.
“We live in a place of confusion, a place that is made up of 100 million young people under the age of 35 who want to find opportunities to work,” said Deputy Project Manager Sarah Al Amiri, UAE Minister of Advanced Science and President of the Center. Spaceman Mohammed Bin Rashid told CBS News.
“And his talents at the time we announced that (Hope) were being used by the wrong groups, were being used for terrorism and other forms of extremism by different groups in the region. And this mission was intended to provide a different way working and a different way of creating opportunities for the region. “
And that, he said, is why the spacecraft was called Al Amal or “Hope.”
Mounted on a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries H-2A rocket, the Hope spacecraft was scheduled to launch from Japan’s picturesque Tanegashima Space Center at 4:51 pm EDT on Tuesday (5:51 am Wednesday local time). The UAE space agency will provide a live webcast.
UAE Space Agency
The flight plan required the release of Hope from the upper stage of the booster approximately an hour after launch, followed moments later by the deployment of its two solar panels and an initial telemetry downlink. The first in a series of trajectory correction maneuvers, or TCM, is planned in about a month.
Throughout the 300 million mile arc journey to Mars, communications will be routed through NASA’s Deep Space Network to the Emirates control center in Dubai.
Assuming no problems develop, Hope will launch a half-hour-long rocket next February, burning half of its propellant to slow down enough to slip into an elliptical orbit with a high point of approximately 26,700 miles and one point. under about 12,400 miles. .
The mission represents an ambitious attempt to join the handful of nations that have attempted interplanetary exploration. The spacecraft was built in the United States by Emirates engineers working at the University of Colorado Atmospheric and Space Physics Laboratory in Boulder, with the participation of Arizona State University and the University of California at Berkeley.
Despite the experience of the project, there are no guarantees.
“The Emirates fully understand the risks associated with this mission,” said Omran Sharaf, project manager for Hope. “Let’s be very honest, 50 percent of the missions that have been to Mars have failed. So it’s a big challenge. But it’s not about getting there.
“For the Emirates, it’s more about the journey, it’s more about the impact,” he said. “Failure is an option? Yes, it is an option. But as long as we learn and move forward, it is just a setback. It is not a failure for us, it is a setback.”
Equipped with three scientific instruments, a powerful camera, and two sophisticated spectrometers, Hope is designed to run for at least one Martian year, the equivalent of two Earth years.
UAE Space Agency
The mission has three scientific objectives: to study weather systems in the lower atmosphere, day and night during all Martian seasons; to study how oxygen and hydrogen escape into space from the upper atmosphere; and to learn how processes in the lower atmosphere contribute to that escape.
The overall goal is to collect data to complement other Mars missions, helping scientists discover how Mars changed from a hot, humid world with an atmosphere thick enough to allow liquid water on the surface, to a dry, icy world with atmospheric pressure. less than 1 percent of the Earth.
But science is only part of the Emirates message to the Middle East.
“The goal was basically to use this mission to cause a disruptive change in the mindset of young people, to create a culture of research and development to support the creation of an innovative, creative and competitive knowledge-based economy,” said Sharaf.
“So, it’s about the future of our economy. It’s about the post-oil economy. (Emirates) wanted to inspire the young generation to enter STEM and use this mission as a catalyst to cause disruptive change and change across multiple sectors. “
“So that’s why they chose the Mars shot and wanted to create an ecosystem that basically supports the creation of an advanced science or technology sector.”
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